Illegal gold mining, a key driver of deforestation, is expanding on protected lands and Indigenous territories across the Amazon rainforest region, a recent report says. The finding was issued on March 25 by Amazon Mining Watch (AMW), a monitoring platform that uses satellite-imagery analysis and AI to map the impact of gold mining across all nine Amazon basin countries. The report said that in the last three months of 2025 alone, new mining-driven deforestation destroyed 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of Amazon forest, an area seven times the size of Central Park in New York City. AMW is a partnership between Amazon Conservation, a U.S. nonprofit working to protect the Amazon Basin; Earth Genome, a U.S. nonprofit that applies AI and science to research climate and conservation issues; and the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. The Pulitzer Network funds reporting on the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia, the...
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More than a month after a prominent Mexican environmentalist was shot in what he has described as an assassination attempt, authorities have yet to announce an arrest in the case. Erik Saracho, director of the Jaguar Alliance, was attacked March 11 at his home in the Pacific coastal town of San Francisco, Nayarit, better known as “San Pancho,” after dropping off his daughter at school. Within hours, San Pancho residents staged a demonstration, demanding justice and declaring their support for Saracho. “We are all Erik,” they chanted. Saracho was later released from the hospital with a right-hand injury. In an email to EcoAméricas, he seemed upbeat, writing that his neighbors are firm in the defense of their community and the environment. Despite risks, he wrote, locals “don’t sell out or get intimidated as easily even after the attempt on my life.” Located on the Pacific coast about 43 kilometers...
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Bananas and other produce grown in certain locations of Brazil’s coastal Espírito Santo state are tainted by heavy metals deposited on farmland over a decade ago when a tailings dam burst, carrying a vast quantity of iron-ore mining waste downstream. Some 62 million gallons of iron-ore waste spilled into the Doce River upstream in Minas Gerais state in the Nov. 2015 accident, flooding land at a number of downstream sites. The accident took a heavy human toll, killing 14 mine employees and five residents of a downslope village that was flattened by the onrushing deluge. (See "Rupture of mine reservoir brings disaster in Brazil" —EcoAméricas, November 2015.) The massive volume of sludge—equal to 24,800 Olympic-sized swimming pools—snuffed out aquatic life along 700 kilometers (435 miles) of the Doce River, a major...
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