By Jeff Turrentine Well, he told us he would do it. And now he’s actually doing it — or at least trying to. Late last week, President Trump, via the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, announced that he was formalizing his plan to develop lands that once belonged within the Bears […]
The Trump administration finalized plans Thursday to open public lands in Utah to the fossil fuel industry. The move completes a process begun in 2017 when the administration announced the largest rollback of land protection in U,S. history: It shrank Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent and its Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by […]
By Raphael Tsavkko Garcia Rarely has something so precious fallen into such unsafe hands. Since Jair Bolsonaro took the Brazilian presidency in 2019, the Amazon, which makes up 10 percent of our planet’s biodiversity and absorbs an estimated 5 percent of global carbon emissions, has been hit with a record number of fires and unprecedented […]
Canadian police discussed shooting indigenous protesters who were trying to stop a natural gas pipeline from being built on their land, documents reported by The Guardian Friday revealed. On Jan. 7, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) armed with assault rifles arrested 14 land defenders when they cleared a checkpoint set up by the Wet’suwet’en nation […]
Right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is angry that 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is speaking out for indigenous rights. On Sunday, Thunberg tweeted a response to the killing of two indigenous leaders in Northeast Brazil Saturday. “Indigenous people are literally being murdered for trying to protect the forest from illegal deforestation,” she wrote. “Over […]
Two indigenous leaders were killed in a drive-by shooting in Northeast Brazil Saturday, and two others were injured. The murdered men belonged to the Guajajara tribe, which is known for organizing guardians to defend their Amazon rainforest territory against illegal tree clearing, The Guardian pointed out. Violence against Brazil’s indigenous communities has increased during the […]
Despite confirmation this week that the deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest is at its highest in more than a decade, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro refuses to take the problem seriously. When confronted with findings from Brazil‘s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) that deforestation between August 2018 and July 2019 was at its […]
Native Americans are disproportionately without access to clean water, according to a new report, “Closing the Water Access Gap in the United States: A National Action Plan,” to be released this afternoon, which shows that more than two million Americans do not have access to running water, indoor plumbing or wastewater services. The report is […]
The night before Indigenous Peoples’ Day, an Indigenous-led movement in Ecuador won a major victory. On Sunday, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno agreed to repeal an austerity package that ignited 11 days of protests led by an indigenous movement that also wants to end mining and oil extraction, Amazon Watch explained. “I’m so happy I don’t […]