Photo courtesy of Survival International

While the Amazon rainforest is certainly known to be teeming with life, it turns out that the people who live there are too. Maria Lucimar Pereira, an indigenous Amazonian belonging to the Kaxinawá tribe of western Brazil, will soon be celebrating her birthday — her 121st birthday, to be exact. The truth behind Pereira’s remarkable longevity was recently discovered by the Brazilian government while performing a routine review of birth records — which, in her case, date back to 1890 — making her the world’s ol…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture / cc

As the President of Brazil’s environmental protection agency IBAMA, which oversees regulationion in the world’s largest rainforest, Curt Trennepohl has a very important position — the only problem is, he says that protecting the environment isn’t part of it. In an interview with Australia’s “60 Minutes”, when asked if his job was to guard the…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: FUNAI

In the dense rainforest of the western Amazon, researchers from Brazil’s Indian protection agency have identified a new tribe of uncontacted indigenous people. Authorities say the remote group likely numbers around 200 members, living in traditionally built huts, called malocas, surrounded by small farms of nuts, banana, and corn. Although they are isolated from the outside world, therein lies many factors which threaten their mysterious way of life….Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Celsias

Over the last several years, the rate of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon had been in steady decline, but the latest data is yet again proving that the problem is far from over. According to figures released today, deforestation in the world’s largest rainforest has increased nearly 1,000 percent from the same period the year before, marking the first rise in over two years — though only time will tell if it is merely a disappointing uptick, or a troubling reverse of trends….Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: identitytheory.com

Yesterday brought historic news—Chevron was fined nearly $9 billion, one of the largest awards for environmental damage ever, for polluting the Ecuadorean Amazon with more than 18 billion gallons of Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Stephen Messenger

Over the past several years, the Brazilian government has been tackling deforestation in the Amazon with vigor, and it seems all their efforts are paying off. In an announcement made today, Brazil confirmed that the rate of forest loss over the last year represents the lowest in over two decades since record-keeping began — and down over 13 percent from the last year. The nation’s Environmental Minister describes the progress as “fantastic.” …Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: AFP

In places throughout the Amazon, some stretches of the region’s most important rivers and tributaries have dried up almost entirely, reducing the normally flowing waterways to a vast plain of broken clay and mud. For some people who live and work in this part of the world, life has come to a screeching halt amid the worst drought in recent memory. It is estimated that more than …Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via EyeBrazil

Brazil’s proposed construction of what would be the third largest hydroelectric dam on the planet has drawn ire from environmental groups the world over. The planned dam at Belo Monte, protestors say, will flood and destroy much of the region’s plant and animal life, as well as displace the indigenous peoples there. So contentious ha…Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: Chany Crystal via flickr

Though support, both political and financial, for the UN REDD forest protection scheme has been growing, there’s also a growing opposition voice expressing the concern that, though keeping forests standing is a good thing, the REDD program could well run roughshod over the rights of indigenous people as international financiers, corporations and timber companies get involved. Mongabay points out that an alte…Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: Alexander Torrenegra via flickr

Here’s an interesting wrinkle on the ongoing effort to slow Amazon deforestation: Reuters reports that even though tree-felling is indeed slowing, the area of land being burned by farmers is actua…Read the full story on TreeHugger