Raging Australian fires hit Sydney suburbs amid 'worst conditions on record'
Bushfires raging across eastern Australia singed Sydney's suburbs on Tuesday, with firefighters scrambling planes and helicopters to douse a built-up neighborhood with water and red retardant. Experts have described the conditions as the worst on record, as spring temperatures climbed toward 40 degrees Celsius (104 ...
Brazilian indigenous group seeks European support for Amazon rainforest protection
A delegation of Brazilian indigenous leaders is seeking to recruit European political support against incursions by loggers and cattle ranchers in the Amazon and the destruction of rainforest. Sonia Guajajara, a former Brazilian vice presidential candidate, is a prominent voice in efforts to protect the ...
Peru charges illegal loggers in Amazon deaths for first time
Authorities in Peru have charged five men in the timber industry with the 2014 murders of four indigenous activists who had battled illegal logging in the Amazon jungle. Two timber executives and three loggers have been charged with the shooting deaths of the activists, said ...
A new green fund being set up by Indonesia should prioritize protecting its rainforests and creating a carbon trading program to help the country meet its goals to curb climate change, environmentalists and officials said. Indonesia's Environment Ministry last week launched an agency to manage ...
A brutal Indonesian forest fire season that left Southeast Asia choking in smog has renewed scrutiny of major palm oil and paper companies, with activists accusing them of breaking promises to halt logging. The monster blazes sent a pall of acrid smoke over the region ...
Killer fungus native to Japan and Korea discovered growing in northeast Australian rainforest
One of the world's deadliest fungi has been discovered in Australia's far north for the first time, thousands of kilometers from its native habitat in the mountains of Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The poison fire coral fungus was discovered in a suburb of Cairns ...
More than 2 million wild animals, including jaguars, pumas and llamas, have perished in weeks of wildfires that devastated huge swaths of Bolivian forest and grassland, environmental experts said Wednesday. The fires devastated the Chiquitania tropical savanna in the east of the country. "We have consulted ...
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said Tuesday it was a lie that the Amazon was being devastated by fire and accused countries critical of him of having a "colonialist spirit." Speaking first at this year's U.N. General Assembly, the far-right leader also heaped praise on his ...
Wildfires have destroyed 4 million hectares in Bolivia since August, group says
Wildfires in Bolivia have razed more than 4 million hectares (10 million acres) of forest and grassland since August, an NGO warned Wednesday, as a state of emergency spread to the country's northeast. The fires have torched some of the country's most environmentally sensitive areas ...
Over 300 slain in Brazil's Amazon over land and resources in past decade, HRW report says
A Human Rights Watch report on Tuesday found that more than 300 people have been killed over the past decade in conflicts over the use of land and resources in the Amazon, many by organized criminal networks profiting from illegal deforestation. Of those cases, only ...
Subterranean blazes: Indonesia struggles to douse fires both above and below ground
Thousands of Indonesian firefighters are locked in an around-the-clock game of whack-a-mole as they battle to extinguish an invisible enemy — underground fires that aggravate global warming. Vast blazes are ripping across the archipelago's rainforests, unleashing a toxic haze over Southeast Asia that has triggered ...
Brazil's Amazon chief Raoni Metuktire tapped for 2020 Nobel Peace Prize nomination
A group of Brazilian anthropologists and environmentalists has put forward Chief Raoni Metuktire of the Kayapo tribe as a candidate for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for a lifetime of work protecting the Amazon rainforest. Raoni — an unmistakable Amazon icon with his large lip ...
