Para

Amazon

Brazil’s crackdown on illegal mining in Munduruku Indigenous land sees success

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Since November 2024, government agents have carried out 523 actions, destroying 90 camps, 15 vessels, 27 heavy machinery, and 224 engines. The coordinated government effort caused losses of $1.9 million USD to criminals. The 5.9-million-acre Munduruku Indigenous Territory, home to 6,500 people, is one of the lands that has been hardest hit by illegal mining in the country. During Bolsonaro’s administration, there was a 363% increase in the area degraded by mining which brought diseases, mercury contamination, attacks, and deaths to communities.

Brazilian Indigenous protest victory

Indigenous protests in Brazil topple law seen as threat to rural schools

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After 23 days of protests, Indigenous groups and teachers in the Brazilian state of Pará have successfully pressured Governor Helder Barbalho to revoke a controversial education law that favored online learning in remote communities and slashed benefits for teachers. According to Indigenous leaders and the local teachers’ union, the law eliminated the existing education framework, cut teachers’ incomes, including a transportation allowance for teachers to reach remote communities.

Cattle

Brazil fines meat ranchers and packers $64 million for raising and purchasing cattle from deforested Amazon

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IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, has fined meat packers and cattle ranchers — including the largest on the planet, JBS — $64 million for buying or raising cattle on illegally deforested land in the Amazon rainforest. The agency said 69 properties had been identified that had sold a total of 18,000 cattle who had been raised on deforested land. They also found 23 meat packing companies that had bought the cattle in Amazonas and Para states. Cattle ranching is the biggest driver of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.

Aerial view of river and mangroves

Brazil boosts protection of Amazon mangroves with new reserves in Pará state

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Brazil’s Pará state has now protected almost all of its Amazonian coastline after establishing two new conservation units that make up the world’s largest and most conserved belt of mangroves. The environmental victory came after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the decree for the two reserves on March 21, placing an additional 184,600 acres of mangrove ecosystems under federal protection.

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