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Facebook enabling Amazon land grabbing, deforestation: Investigation
In a powerful new documentary broadcast on 26 February, entitled Selling the Amazon, BBC Brasil went undercover to show how illegal land grabbers are moving in on public land in the Brazilian Amazon, including within protected areas — clearing rainforest and selling plots to ranchers at highly inflated prices. In a modern twist that is attracting international attention, the documentary showed plots of public land being openly advertised on Facebook. Illegally advertising the sale of public land in the Amazon on websites is not new. In a groundbreaking book Who Clears the Land Owns It, authors...
Mongabay
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When Chinook salmon is off the menu, other prey will do for endangered orcas
For nearly 20 years, Robin Baird has been following killer whales, trying to figure out what they eat. At first, he would look to see what was in their mouths as the whales feasted on fish near the surface. But then he and his colleague, Brad Hanson, started looking for more subtle clues in their flukeprints — the orbs of placid water that appear on the surface when a killer whale dives into the sea, or flicks its tail underwater. In or around these flukeprints, you can find fish scales and fecal matter, which provide a treasure trove of information. “If they’re catching things near the surfac...
Mongabay
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The Possible Meat: A Brazilian farmer shows ranching can regenerate the Cerrado
In 2016, Matheus Sborgia, then a 26-year-old Brazilian pastry chef, received sad news: Luis Sborgia, his grandfather, had passed away. Matheus was in Pollenzo, in northern Italy, about to graduate with a bachelor’s degree at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, where he had dived head-first into the world of food. In Brazil, his grandfather had left behind 50 hectares (124 acres) of pastureland in the municipality of Inocência, in the heart of Cerrado, the Brazilian savanna, where for decades he had raised livestock. “That was just a click. ‘You need to go back to Brazil,'” Sborgia said. “Y...
Mongabay
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Video: Doomed or viable? Sumatran rhino captive breeding faces a dilemma
Conservationists trying to save the Sumatran rhino from extinction face a critical dilemma: In seeking to build a robust captive-breeding program, should the healthiest, most fertile rhinos be left in the wild or brought into captivity? It’s a question with no simple answers. The species, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, once roamed from the Himalayan foothills to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, but is today only known to survive in a few small pockets of forest in Indonesia. No more than 80 individuals are believed to be left on Earth. Decades of poaching and habitat loss brought the species to t...
Mongabay
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How technology can help us achieve at least 30% ocean protection (commentary)
It is a dark, stormy night in the South Atlantic. Coastal radar picks up a boat heading out towards the edge of a country’s 200-mile limit of jurisdiction. The on-board Automatic Identification System (AIS), required by authorities to track and monitor vessel movements, tells the watching coastguard that it is a Panamanian registered industrial trawler. As it approaches a no-take (meaning fishing is not allowed) Marine Protected Area (MPA), newly designated because of its sensitive bottom habitat, the ship’s AIS suddenly stops transmitting and the vessel goes “dark.” A call goes out to authori...
Mongabay
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‘We attack,’ Indonesia declares in joint bid with Malaysia to shield palm oil
JAKARTA — Palm oil giants Indonesia and Malaysia are teaming up to fight what they call a smear campaign targeted at the commodity. The move sets the stage for what activists say will be a costly PR war that takes the focus away from efforts to clean up the industry. “Indonesia will continue to fight against palm oil discrimination,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo said at a press conference in Jakarta on Feb. 6 with Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. “The efforts will be stronger if conducted together. Indonesia invites Malaysia to have the same commitment regarding the issue of palm...
Mongabay
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Amazon ‘Tribes on the Edge’: Q&A with documentary filmmaker Céline Cousteau
A solemn Kanimari man looks at filmmaker Céline Cousteau and says, “I’m 28 years old. All of my cousins — my relatives that were born at the same time as me — they’re all dead.” He lives in one of the many villages in the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory at the remote northwest edge of the Brazilian Amazon, an area plagued by persistent disease, neglect, and death. This is one of the scenes from Cousteau’s new film, Tribes on the Edge, a documentary feature that offers a raw look at the lives, culture and struggles of the people of the Javari Valley, the second-largest Indigenous territory i...
Mongabay
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Opportunities to save Africa’s unique biodiversity are dwindling, says Rodger Schlickeisen
Rodger Schlickeisen made a name for himself in conservation circles from the early 1990s thanks to his leadership at Defenders of Wildlife, which grew rapidly in membership and influence during his 20 years at the helm. The group became known as a staunch advocate for wildlife via its defense of the U.S. Endangered Species Act and conservation policies. Schlickeisen left Defenders in 2011 to embark on a second career in conservation as head of the Wildcat Foundation, the philanthropy funded by U.S. investor and businessman David Bonderman. The Wildcat Foundation supports efforts to protect wil...
Mongabay
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Organizations aim to block funds for East African oil pipeline
National and international NGOs from around the world have asked more than two dozen banks not to finance a 1,445-kilometer (898-mile) pipeline to shuttle oil from fields in Uganda to a port on Tanzania’s coast. The groups contend that the project is already impinging on communities and exacerbating poverty in the region. Their representatives also say that construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP, comes with risks to both the immediate environment through which it would run and to the global climate. “Banks have been made aware of the tremendous risks posed by this pipeli...
Mongabay
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Papua deforestation highlights eastward shift of Indonesia forest clearing
JAKARTA — Forests in parts of Indonesia regions that have remained largely untouched are now fast disappearing as deforestation driven by agribusiness and infrastructure development moves east, according to a new report. Using deforestation data from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) data set and land cover maps from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, the report by a coalition of 11 Indonesian NGOs looks at the trend of forest clearing across Indonesia in the past two decades. It found that while the annual deforestation rate has been decreasing over...
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