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Bolivia's surging deforestation alarms environmentalists

17 July 2023

Bolivia accounts for 9 per cent of all primary forest lost across the globe, and conservationists fear deforestation will only increase due to the government’s desire to expand agricultural production


Amazon deforestation has begun to slow since Lula took over in Brazil

20 June 2023

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has made progress towards halting the illegal destruction of Amazon rainforest, but political opposition and the incoming El Niño will bring further challenges


This aerial picture taken from an airplane on July 27, 2021, shows the smoke rising from a forest fire outside the village of Berdigestyakh, in the republic of Sakha, Siberia. - Russia is plagued by widespread forest fires, with the Sakha-Yakutia region in Siberia being the worst affected. According to many scientists, Russia -- especially its Siberian and Arctic regions -- is among the countries most exposed to climate change. The country has set numerous records in recent years and in June 2020 registered 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the town of Verkhoyansk -- the highest temperature recorded above the Arctic circle since measurements began. (Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP) (Photo by DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images)

Northern forests released a record amount of carbon dioxide in 2021

2 March 2023

Heatwaves and droughts in Russia and Canada resulted in a big jump in carbon emissions from boreal forests in 2021, on the back of a rising trend since 2000


Dry ground in a former lagoon

Rare triple-dip La Niña is mostly to blame for South America's drought

22 February 2023

Historically dry and hot weather in Argentina and neighbouring countries is being driven by the La Niña weather system and exacerbated by climate change


Mushrooms growing around the base of a tree in a forest

Do trees communicate via a 'wood wide web'? The evidence is lacking

13 February 2023

A review of studies on mycorrhizal fungi finds there is insufficient evidence for the popular idea that trees communicate and share resources via these underground networks


Aerial view of the Potaro River running across the Kaieteur National Park which sits in a section of the Amazon rainforest in the Potaro-Siparuni region of Guyana, taken on September 24, 2022. - Despite the dispute with Guyana, the Esequibo region is a destination of migration from Venezuela. Guyana defends a limit established in 1899 by an arbitration court in Paris, while Venezuela claims the Geneva Agreement, signed in 1966 with the United Kingdom before Guyanese independence, which established the basis for a negotiated solution and ignored the previous treaty. But the Guyanese government is promoting a process in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to ratify the current borders and put an end to the dispute. (Photo by Patrick FORT / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK FORT/AFP via Getty Images)

2023 could mark a turning point for the Amazon rainforest

28 December 2022

New political leaders in Brazil and Colombia have promised to protect the rainforest, raising hopes of saving the ecosystem from becoming savannah


A gold mine in Bolivar state in the south of Venezuela

Deforestation in Venezuela surges as gold miners ransack the Amazon

9 December 2022

The loss of pristine forest is estimated to be increasing by around 170 per cent annually in Venezuela - an even faster rate than Brazil - as a result of a state-sanctioned boom in gold mining


A group of peccaries

Herds of pig-like peccaries seem to disappear and reappear years later

9 November 2022

Massive herds of a hairy, pig-like creature known as a peccary sometimes disappear suddenly across much of the Americas, and now we know why – its populations go through 30-year cycles of boom and bust


Tikal National Park - part of the Maya Forest in Guatemala

Guatemala’s rainforest is expanding thanks to community efforts

26 September 2022

The forests of the Maya Biosphere Reserve are growing rather than shrinking, because of a community-led conservation programme


Yanomami man standing in river holding fish

Half of fish tested in an Amazon river have unsafe levels of mercury

31 August 2022

At four locations close to the Yanomami Indigenous reserve in Brazil, many species of fish were found to have mercury levels considered unsafe for consumption


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