Tree Huggers

Brazil’s Senate approved an environmental licensing bill that could expedite major infrastructure projects, including paving a highway that cuts through one of the most intact parts of the Amazon Rainforest in northwestern Brazil.

The devastation that has swept across Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra in recent weeks has forced Indonesia to confront an uncomfortable truth. What unfolded was not only a natural disaster but a collision between an exceptional climatic cycle and a landscape steadily stripped of its natural defenses.

Brazil’s lawmakers have voted, by an overwhelming majority, to weaken the nation’s environmental licensing system, overturning key protections that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had vetoed earlier this year.

“A road is always the death of the rainforest, and that’s been borne out by literally every case you can think of.”

Using advanced satellite data and machine learning, the researchers tracked more than a decade of changes in aboveground forest biomass, the amount of carbon stored in trees and woody vegetation. They found that while Africa gained carbon between 2007 and 2010, widespread forest loss in tropical rainforests has since tipped the balance.

As winter closes in across much of North America, migratory birds are heading south to warmer climes and more abundant food. But until recently, scientists didn’t have a good understanding of exactly where they went.

The European Union has voted to postpone implementing a key antideforestation law for the second year in a row, citing technical concerns. Critics of the move warn that a delay and other proposed changes will further weaken the law.

A new report by the Forests & Finance Coalition finds that despite years of voluntary climate commitments, banks and other financial institutions have continued to increase their investments in companies linked to deforestation. The value of investments in these companies — in industries such as beef, soy, palm oil and paper — has increased by almost $8 billion since the Paris Agreement was signed a decade ago, the report finds.

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What was once considered a climate holy grail comes with serious tradeoffs. The world wants more of it anyway.

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MOCOA, Colombia—This isn’t the first time foreigners have shown up here, where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon rainforest, insisting they needed what was under the ground.

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Colombia se anunció como el primer país amazónico en declarar la totalidad de su bioma amazónico como zona libre de petróleo y minería a gran escala.

While world leaders debate climate policy in Belém (PA), more than 300 Indigenous people and allies from social movements held the 8th Ancestral Cry on the Tapajós River, in the Lower Tapajós region of western Pará. The peaceful action took place within Tupinambá Territory, inside the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve, and included a symbolic occupation of cargo barges, protesting against the expansion of the Arco Norte waterway system and the proposed Ferrogrão railway (EF-170).

A new study warns that deforestation across Ghana, Niger and Nigeria is intensifying West Africa’s water crisis, threatening the health and livelihoods of more than 122 million people.

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A new Greenpeace International report, Toxic Skies: How Agribusiness is Choking the Amazon, reveals how fires linked to industrial agriculture are turning the forest’s air toxic during the dry season. The findings are a stark warning that the Amazon’s crisis is not only about trees. It is about the air millions of people breathe, and the health of our shared planet.

[In August 2025], Indigenous nations from both sides of the Peru–Ecuador border made history by uniting in a powerful binational alliance to defend the Amazon.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/29768007

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Earlier in 2025, political and administrative leaders in Senegal gathered to plant trees in a forest in the country’s northwest to mark National Tree Day. They took advantage of the ceremony to call for action towards a greener, more resilient and sustainable country. Senegal is one of 11 countries participating in Africa’s Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative which aims to achieve these goals. However, a newly published study finds the GGW has not delivered ecological benefits on the scale promised by pledges of more than $20 billion in support.

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“Every one of these banks must close the existing loopholes and fully exit Amazon oil and gas without delay.”

A new pause in implementation of the EU Deforestation Regulation is regrettable and should not lead to weakening of the law

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Governments are far off track to meet a global target to end deforestation by 2030, according to a progress assessment. Experts say the report is a wake-up call ahead of COP30 next month, which will be the first UN climate summit held in the Amazon rainforest.

Global deforestation hasn’t slowed in any significant way in the four years since 127 countries pledged to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030. The newly published 2025 Forest Declaration Assessment shows that nations are 63% off track from meeting their zero-deforestation target.

Most people probably think that the rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest in the world, has been around for millions of years. However recent research suggests that it is mostly just 2,000 or so years old. The forest reached roughly its modern state following five centuries of regeneration after it was massively fragmented when the dry season suddenly became longer some 2,500 years ago.

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“Extreme” wildfires emitted more than 8bn tonnes of carbon dioxide during the 2024-25 “global fire season”, according to a new report.

Could the boreal forest be less fragile than we think? Contrary to the predictions of models that forecast its rapid decline in favour of temperate maple forests, the ecological history of the boreal forest is showing surprising resilience.

At least three people have been killed in Ecuador as the government further ramps up its use of force against Indigenous-led protests triggered in part by crackdowns on environmentalists, according to civil society and human rights groups.

The most pressing question of our time deals with how to mitigate climate degradation. One solution is to expand woodlands dramatically and leave them to their natural processes.

The study and a couple of its main points:

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In 2024, the Amazon Rainforest underwent its most devastating forest fire season in more than two decades. According to a new study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the fire-driven forest degradation released an estimated 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, a sevenfold increase compared with the previous two years.

Two years ago, Ecuador surprised the world with a historic referendum: more than 58% of the population voted to keep nearly one billion barrels of crude oil underground in Yasuní National Park – one of the most biodiverse places on Earth and home to Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation (Tagaeri and Taromenane). The referendum was a triumph of democracy and a global example of how a society can choose to protect life over oil.

The Trump administration has said it will rescind Bill Clinton’s roadless rule, more than two decades after its introduction appeared to mark the end of the bitter battle between environmentalists and loggers over the future of America’s best remaining woodland.

Plastic pollution is widespread across the Amazon Rainforest’s rivers, plants and animals, according to a recent study.

The public has less than a week remaining to comment on the administration’s plans.

The European Commission has proposed pushing back the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) for another year, to December 2026, citing concerns that its IT system is not yet ready to handle the demands that the regulation would place on it.

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Police in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will be paid bonuses for killing suspects. Aimed at organized crime, the law will hit ethnic minorities - and eco-activists.

An unexpected region of the Amazon is at the forefront of rapid growth in climate extremes, a new report reveals.

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It’s a sacred sanctuary for bisons, wolves and countless birds. The Białowieża Forest is the last untouched forest in Europe. Not a single tree has ever been cut down there. Located between Poland and Belarus, it fascinates scientists and nature lovers alike.

I received this PDF in a batch file transfer from someone, and it is not at all relevant to where I live, but I have located the same PDF online and share it here so that it may be of use to others (particularly those in North America).

Brazil’s antitrust regulator, CADE, on Sept. 30 decided to suspend the Amazon soy moratorium from Jan. 1, 2026. Depending on the probe’s course of action, this could dismantle one of the nation’s most important private sector pacts credited with slowing deforestation of the tropical rainforest for soy plantations.

The group intends to travel more than 3,000 kilometers to denounce the impacts of agribusiness on the Amazon and Cerrado and to oppose the construction of the Ferrogrão railway – planned to connect northern Mato Grosso to Pará.

Since she was a child, Argentine park ranger Natay Collet can remember seeing trucks rolling through her hometown, throwing up dust clouds and piled high with the reddish-brown trunks of the Chaco’s famed quebracho tree.

https://amazonrestore.codeberg.page/badass-fruiterrarist-land/

AI generated TL;DR

The Trump administration claims opening protected areas like Cleveland National Forest to road building will aid the timber industry and reduce wildfires. Opponents see a giveaway that will lead to more burning and degradation of pristine lands.

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Please don’t do this to your trees. It hurts my soul.

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At first, state officials, including the governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima, and the state’s secretary of the environment, were quick to blame the neighbouring state of Pará as the source of fires. However, the study and its data tell a different story.

Maan Tagnan has planted several varieties of fertilizer trees in her field, including Albizia stipulata, Ferruginea and white acacia (Faidherbia albida). The acacia, known locally as zaanga, is revered by agroforesters, Zouré says. “It’s an off-season tree that sheds its leaves during the rainy season and provides shade in the dry season, making it essential for maintaining soil fertility in agroforestry systems,” he says.

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Growing tall trees to provide shade for cocoa plantations in west Africa could sequester millions of tonnes of carbon, according to a new study.

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In Pará, Brazil’s top palm oil-producing state, Indigenous and traditional communities face mounting threats as companies expand into contested lands. Between 2021 and 2023, Mongabay’s Karla Mendes reported from the region, where the expansion of oil palm plantations has triggered pollution, deforestation and violent land conflicts. This series exposes how some of Brazil’s leading palm oil firms stand accused of pollution, land grabbing, and repression of Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian Quilombola communities. Cited in court rulings and prompting international certification suspensions, the reporting reveals the systemic failures that have enabled these abuses — and the growing calls for justice from communities on the frontlines.

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The team from Nanjing University, China, and the University of Leeds, U.K., analyzed how deforestation in the states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso — which together are responsible for about 30% of all deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in recent decades — affected the atmospheric water cycle between 2002 and 2015. They found that a 3.2% mean loss of forest cover led to a 5.4% reduction in dry season rainfall, highlighting that precipitation in the Amazon is highly sensitive to changes in forest cover.

The findings come during fire season in the Amazon region, when seasonal blazes are driven by drought, the climate crisis and agricultural expansion, with large ranches and farms using fire to clear land. The Amazon region has experienced record forest loss in recent years, with fires a crucial driver.

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At just 200 m^2 tiny forests in urban areas are planted in heavily-amended soils all at once (multiple levels of canopy and groundcover). The result is forests that are mature in 10 years instead of 100.

Healthy forests are more than climate shields; in the Amazon, they also serve as public-health infrastructure.

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