#mongabay

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A captive Sumatran tiger.

Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

[reasonsforhope]

President Lula’s first pro-environment acts protect Indigenous people and the Amazon

“Effective Jan. 2, Brazil’s President Lula issued six decrees revoking or altering anti-environment-and-Indigenous measures from his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, acts highly celebrated by environmentalists and activists.

One of the decrees annuls mining in Indigenous lands and protected areas, another resumes plans to combat deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, and a third reinstates the Amazon Fund, a pool of funding provided to Brazil by developed nations to finance a variety of programs aimed at halting deforestation. [The fund] was stalled under Bolsonaro.

Right afterward, Norway announced the immediate release of already available funding for new projects as “President Lula confirmed his ambitions to reduce deforestation and reinstated the governance structure of the Amazon Fund.”

In an unprecedented act in Brazil’s history, Lula also created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, complying with his promise to native people who supported his candidacy “to combat 500 years of inequality.”’

[Legal advisor Mauricio] Guetta noted that the newly resumed plans to fight deforestation will revive efforts that slashed deforestation rates by 83% between 2004 and 2012 and “social participation will again serve as a guide for the application of public policies.” According to him, changes during Bolsonaro’s administration regarding environmental sanctioning led the number of trials in the environmental agency to drop from an average of 5,300 per year between 2014 and 2018 to only 113 in 2019 and a mere 17 in 2020. “With the improvements made by the new rules of the current administration, these threats have been solved and the regular processing of proceedings on notices of infraction, an important mechanism to discourage the undertaking of environmental crimes, has been reestablished.”

He said he expected new “revocations” and normative revisions to occur in the coming days “considering the depth of abyss” of the last four years under Bolsonaro...

Unprecedented Ministry of Indigenous Peoples

In an unprecedented act in Brazil’s history, Lula also created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, complying with his promise to Native people who supported his candidacy.

“No one knows our forests better or is better able to defend them than those who have been here since immemorial time. Each demarcated land is a new area of environmental protection,” Lula said in the National Congress. “We will repeal all injustices committed against the Indigenous peoples.”” -via Mongabay, 1/4/23

[elephantaday]

Day 756 of posting pictures of elephants.

Source: Mongabay

[redpandazine]

Nepal’s first community-based red panda conservation area sparks hope

KATHMANDU — A hilly town close to Nepal’s eastern border with India has declared an area under its jurisdiction as the country’s first community-based red panda (Ailurus fulgens) conservation area, fueling hope for the endangered species’ long-term survival. The Puwamajhuwa area, spread over 116.21 hectares (287.16 acres) of lush-green temperate broad-leaved trees, incorporates two community-managed […]

[sataniccapitalist]

Indigenous chief shot in head in Brazil’s ‘palm oil war’ region; crisis group launched

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Karla Mendes is a fellow. A prominent Indigenous leader was shot in the head on May 14 in the Brazilian Amazon, intensifying the cry for justice in a dubbed “palm oil war” region where violence against land activists keeps systematically soaring without […]

[sustainableprosperity2]

Barrage of droughts weakens Amazon’s capacity to bounce back, study finds

Severe droughts over the past two decades have affected the resilience of the Amazon Rainforest, a new study shows, with stretches of affected forest taking between one and three years to recover their usual growth rate. The work by researchers from Brazil and Portugal focused on an analysis of primary productivity — the amount of […]

[solarpunkwitchcraft]

$3 million and an official apology: Brazil’s Ashaninka get unprecedented compensation for deforestation on their land

An unprecedented court settlement guaranteed reparations to the Ashaninka people of the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, whose lands were deforested in the 1980s to supply the European furniture industry. The indigenous people only agreed with the negotiation because it included an official apology and a recognition of their

Far from the Brazil nut trees that shape the landscape of the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous Reserve in the western tip of the state of Acre, the Ashaninka people realized their most important victory since the federal government first recognized their territory in 1992. On April 1, 2020, the Prosecutor General of the Republic, Augusto Aras, signed an unprecedented settlement that guaranteed reparations for crimes committed almost 40 years ago. The agreement gives this indigenous community the right to compensation of R$ 14 million (nearly US$ 3 million) with an official apology from the criminal offenders.

[calosoma-amitch]

Legendary entomologist Terry Erwin passes away at age 79

We lost a big one in the entomological field. I would teach my students about Dr. Erwin’s work on biodiversity in the tropics, and how we came to understand just how numerous and rich insects were compared to other organisms on this planet. He will be missed.