Amazon Rainforest & Deforestation Watch Thread

[wjfox]

Horrendous.

-----

Arson turns Amazon reforestation project to ashes

September 22, 2023

It was supposed to be a good-news story out of the damaged Amazon rainforest: a project that replanted hundreds of thousands of trees in an illegally deforested nature reserve in Brazil.

Then it went up in flames, allegedly torched by land-grabbers trying to reclaim the territory for cattle pasture.

Launched in 2019 by environmental research group Rioterra, the reforestation project took 270 hectares (665 acres) of forest that had been razed by cattle ranching on a protected nature reserve in the northern state of Rondonia and replanted it with 360,000 trees.

The idea was ambitious, says Rioterra's project coordinator, Alexis Bastos: save a corner of the world's biggest rainforest, fighting climate change and creating green jobs along the way.

Then, just as the scarred brown land started returning to emerald-green forest—its growing young trees absorbing an estimated 8,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere in three years—the whole thing burned to the ground.

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-arson-ama ... ashes.html

[weatheriscool]

More than 100 dolphins dead in Amazon as water hits 102 degrees Fahrenheit
Source: CNN

More than a hundred dolphins have been found dead in the Brazilian Amazon amid an historic drought and record-high water temperatures that in places have exceeded 102 degrees Fahrenheit.

The dead dolphins were all found in Lake Tefé over the past seven days, according to the Mamirauá Institute, a research facility funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Science.

The institute said such a high number of deaths was unusual and suggested record-high lake temperatures and an historic drought in the Amazon may have been the cause.

The news is likely to add to the concerns of climate scientists over the effects human activity and extreme droughts are having on the region.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/01/americas ... index.html

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

[caltrek]

Ecuador Court Orders Stolen Land Returned to Siekopai People
by Brett Wilkins
November 29, 2023

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) Amazon defenders this week cheered what one group called "an invaluable precedent for all Indigenous peoples fighting to recover their lands" after an Ecuadorean appeals court ruled in favor of the Siekopai Nation's ownership claim over its ancestral homeland.

The November 24 decision by a three-judge panel of the Sucumbios Provincial Court of Justice gives Ecuador's Ministry of the Environment 45 days to hand over title to more than 104,000 acres of land along the country's border with Peru.

"Today is a great day for our nation," Siokepai Nation President Elias Piyahuaje said following the ruling. "Until the end of time, this land will be ours."
(See link below for Twitter feeds)

The Siekopai—who call their homeland Pë'këya—were forcibly displaced from the region, one of the most biodiverse on the planet, in 1941 during the first of three border wars between Peru and Ecuador. They were then prevented from returning home as the Ecuadorean government unilaterally claimed ownership of Pë'këya.

The ruling marks the first time that an Ecuadorean court has ordered the return of land stolen from Indigenous people.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/siekopai


Ecuador


Ecuador

[wjfox]

Amazon rainforest: Deforestation rate halved in 2023

15 hours ago

The rate of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon fell by nearly 50% in 2023 compared to the previous year, space agency data suggests.

Brazil's environment ministry said it was the lowest recorded deforestation rate in the last five years.

Though smaller than in previous years, the deforested area is still more than six times the size of New York City.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged to end deforestation by 2030 when he took office a year ago.

Preliminary data from national space agency Inpe showed 5,153 sq km (1,989.6 sq miles) of the Amazon were cleared in 2023, down from 10,278 sq km in 2022.

President Lula promised to restore the Amazon rainforest and chase down climate criminals during his speech at climate summit COP27 in 2022.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-67962297



Credit: Image source, Andre Dib/WWF

[caltrek]

Vanishing Ants, Waning Forests, and Fading Hope for Brazil’s Amazon
by Jonathan Watts
January 28, 2024

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) What a difference a year makes in the Brazilian Amazon. At the start of 2023, I wrote about the green shoots of the rainy season and feelings of hope inspired by the new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who promised to strengthen Indigenous rights and aim for zero deforestation. Twelve months on, both the vegetation and political optimism are drying up.

The most severe drought in living memory has finally been broken, but the rains are late and weak compared with previous years. The Xingu River is far lower than normal for January. The pulse of forest growth is also fainter—the new vegetation does not push out as far into the road as it did last January. The neighboring cattle pasture is faring even worse. The forage grasses, known as capim, were so severely burned that they have not grown back, leaving the hillsides brown and the cows emaciated. Several of the poor, skeletal beasts have escaped their fields and wandered towards our community in search of food. Local people say more than a dozen cows have died of starvation at this one ranch, and countless others elsewhere.

Less obvious, but in many ways more worrying, is the dearth of leafcutter ants. These large-mandibled insects are usually everywhere, slicing and carrying vegetation in columns to create fungal gardens in their nests, which spread out over dozens of meters in Gaudi-esque towers and mounds. Entomologists say these ants have the second most complex societies on Earth, after humans, and they are the dominant herbivores in the South American tropics, trimming about a sixth of all the leaves produced in the forest. This stimulates new plant growth and enriches the soil. Not for nothing have these ants been described as ecosystem engineers.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... -crisis/

[caltrek]

Amazon Rainforest at the Threshold: Loss of Forest Worsens Climate Change
February 14, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) The Amazon rainforest could approach a tipping point, which could lead to a large-scale collapse with serious implications for the global climate system. A new Nature study by an international research team including scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research (PIK) reveals that up to 47 percent of the Amazonian forest is threatened and identifies climatic and land-use thresholds that should not be breached to keep the Amazon resilient.

“The Southeastern Amazon has already shifted from a carbon sink to a source –meaning that the current amount of human pressure is too high for the region to maintain its status as a rainforest over the long term. But the problem doesn't stop there. Since rainforests enrich the air with a lot of moisture which forms the basis of precipitation in the west and south of the continent, losing forest in one place can lead to losing forest in another in a self-propelling feedback loop or simply ‘tipping’”, states PIK scientist Boris Sakschewski, one of the authors of the study.

Up to 47 percent of the Amazon rainforest threatened by droughts and fires

Recent stress from increased temperatures, droughts, deforestation, and fires even in central and remote parts is weakening the Amazon's natural resilience mechanisms, pushing this system towards a critical threshold. The study finds that by the year 2050, 10-47 percent of the Amazonian forests will be threatened by increasing disturbances, risking to cross a tipping point.

Based on a large body of scientific results, the researchers identify five critical drivers connected to this tipping point: global warming, annual rainfall amounts, the intensity of rainfall seasonality, dry season length, and accumulated deforestation. For each of these drivers they suggest safe boundaries to keep the Amazon resilient.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1034301

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

2023 Was '2 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back' for Tropical Forest Loss
by Olivia Rosane
April 4, 2024

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) An annual accounting of global deforestation, released Thursday, shows that political will can make a significant difference when it comes to protecting vital ecosystems and the Indigenous and local communities that depend on them—but that policymakers in many regions are not taking enough action to save tropical forests.

The data, gathered by the University of Maryland's Global Land Analysis and Discover Lab and published on the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Global Forest Watch program, found that primary tropical forest loss in 2023 decreased by more than one-third in Brazil and nearly 50% in Colombia after both countries elected leaders who championed conservation policies. However, on the global level, these declines were offset by increased deforestation in other countries.

"The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year's forest loss," Global Forest Watch director Mikaela Weisse said in a statement. "Steep declines in the Brazilian Amazon and Colombia show that progress is possible, but increasing forest loss in other areas has largely counteracted that progress. We must learn from the countries that are successfully slowing deforestation."

All told, 3.7 million hectares of primary tropical forests were felled last year at a rate equivalent to 10 soccer fields per minute. While tropical deforestation decreased by 9% in 2023 compared with 2022, the overall deforestation rate has held steady when compared to 2019 and 2021. Tree clearing released 2.4 metric gigatons of climate pollution into the atmosphere, which is nearly half of the U.S.'s yearly emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2023-forest-loss