Amazon rainforest

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Kilimanjaro, Grand Canyon Among '7 Wonders' Finalists

(Newser) - Twenty-eight finalists made the cut today for the “New 7 Wonders of Nature” poll, including the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the AP reports. Organizers expect 1 billion people to vote online or by phone before the winners are announced in 2011. Other wonders up...

Sole Survivor of '71 Jungle Crash Recounts Ordeal

Teen girl fell 2 miles from sky, trekked 10 days out of Amazon

(Newser) - The miraculous survival of a sole passenger in the Indian Ocean plane crash this week brought back some painful memories for German librarian Juliane Koepke, CNN reports. Koepke, then 17, was the sole survivor of a 1971 crash in the Amazon rainforest. She plummeted more than two miles strapped to...

Amazon Indians Win Repeal of Land Grab Laws

Decision hailed as major victory for indigenous people

(Newser) - Peru's Congress has revoked two laws that led to bloody clashes between police and indigenous protesters, CNN reports. Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of ditching the laws that opened up the country's Amazon region to mining, logging, and oil companies. Dozens of people died earlier this month when police moved...

Photos Reveal 'Amazon Tiananmen'

Photos from Peru add weight to claims government covered up massacre

(Newser) - Graphic photographs taken by aid workers reveal the extent of violence Peru's military used to crush a land-rights protest by indigenous people earlier this month, the Independent reports. Police are seen pulling injured protesters from ambulances and beating them and bodies are seen piled by the roadside, adding weight to...

Nervous Peace Prevails After Peru Cops Quell Unrest

Curfew in place after clashes kill dozens of indigenous people, police

(Newser) - An uneasy peace has returned to northeast Peru after 3 days of clashes between indigenous people and security forces that left dozens dead, CNN reports. A curfew is holding, and both police and protesters say they want to settle their dispute through nonviolent means. The leader of the indigenous rights...

Peru Army Cracks Down on Amazon Eco Uprising

(Newser) - The Peruvian Army has imposed a curfew and set up checkpoints following deadly clashes with indigenous tribes protesting plans to drill for oil and gas in ancestral homelands in the Amazon region, reports the BBC. Dozens of people, both police and protesters, were killed in the clashes that mark the...

Climate Change Doom Looms for 85% of Amazon

Death of much of the rainforest is inevitable even under most optimistic scenario

(Newser) - Climate change may be a bigger threat to the Amazon rainforest than all the chainsaws in the world, the Guardian reports. New research predicts a global temperature rise of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit—widely believed to be the best-case scenario even if carbon emissions are slashed—would kill off up...

Meet Titanoboa, 45-Foot Snake
 Meet Titanoboa, 45-Foot Snake 
Feb 5, 2009 11:32 AM CST

Meet Titanoboa, 45-Foot Snake

(Newser) - A 45-foot, 1.25-ton snake stalked the jungles of South America in the period shortly after dinosaurs went extinct, the Times of London reports. Researchers have found 28 individual “Titanoboas” in Colombia’s Cerrejon Coal Mine; with every specimen at least 40 feet long, scientists say it’s likely...

Brazil Rescues 4,600 Slaves in 2008

(Newser) - Brazil freed more than 4,600 slaves this year after storming a record number of remote farms, the Guardian reports. Often teaming up with federal police, the government's anti-slavery task force raided 255 farms, but advocates say thousands of poor are still being trapped into debt slavery. "It is...

Brazilian Busted in Murder of US Nun Nabbed on Slavery Charges

Dorothy Stang's slaying was subject of movie

(Newser) - A Brazilian rancher facing charges in the death of a 73-year-old American nun has been arrested again for fraud and slavery in the same Amazon region where the nun was shot three years ago, reports CNN. Evidence supporting the latest charges will be used at his murder trial. Four others...

Norway Ponies Up $1B to Help Save Rainforests

Brazil seeks more donors in fight against deforestation, climate change

(Newser) - Brazil’s renewed push to save the rainforest gained support from a far-flung proponent today when oil-rich Norway pledged nearly $1 billion, the BBC reports. “Efforts against deforestation may give us the largest, quickest, and cheapest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," said Norway's prime minister. "Brazilian efforts...

In Remote Amazon, Complex Towns Once Flourished

Archaeologists see advanced civilization in areas since overtaken by rain forest

(Newser) - Researchers have unearthed remains of densely populated, complex urban towns in a remote region of the Amazon River Basin, the BBC reports. In an area of western Brazil thought to be virgin forest, researchers found extensive and advanced human activity, including roads, farming, wetland management, and what appear to be...

Colombia to Americans: Cocaine Kills Environment

Drug-makers are destroying Colombia's precious rainforest

(Newser) - Colombia is adding a new tactic in its campaign to persuade Americans to stop buying cocaine: a plea for the environment. The government wants to spread the message to users—especially, say, wealthy professionals who dutifully recycle but also partake of the drug—that cocaine growers are running roughshod over...

Half of Amazon Could Be Gone in 20 Years
Half of Amazon Could Be Gone in 20 Years
opinion
Jun 19, 2008 6:58 PM CDT

Half of Amazon Could Be Gone in 20 Years

Lust for beef, ethanol drives deforestation; nations must act now

(Newser) - An "unprecedented" combination of ills is threatening the Amazon, and if nothing is done to ease the pressure on the world’s largest rainforest, more than half of it could be gone or withered in 20 years, Rhett Butler writes for Yale Environment 360. After a three-year decline, forest...

First Contact With Amazon Tribe
 First Contact With Amazon Tribe 
May 30, 2008 7:25 AM CDT

First Contact With Amazon Tribe

Warriors aim arrows at aircraft

(Newser) - One of the last remaining Amazon tribal communities yet to have contact with the outside world has been photographed from the air, reports the BBC. The photos show startled, red-painted tribesmen aiming arrows at the aircraft overhead. Members live in thatched huts near Brazil's remote Peruvian border. More than half...

Brazil's Condoms Go Tropical
 Brazil's Condoms Go Tropical 
Apr 8, 2008 6:55 PM CDT

Brazil's Condoms Go Tropical

Rainforest rubber trees will help nation ween itself off foreign producers

(Newser) - Brazil buys more condoms and boasts more rainforest than any other country; now officials hope to connect the dots, the BBC reports. The government will use rubber from Amazon trees to make 100 million condoms a year, given out freely as part of the country's anti-AIDS program. Rubber can be...

Brazil Targets Amazon Loggers
 Brazil Targets Amazon Loggers 
Mar 21, 2008 9:33 AM CDT

Brazil Targets Amazon Loggers

Government cracks down as deforestation rises sharply

(Newser) - Brazil is launching a new crackdown against the loggers who are destroying the Amazon rainforest at alarming rates, the Washington Post reports. After several years of decline, deforestation is surging as cattle ranchers clear land and loggers cut down trees for charcoal to fuel steel mills abroad. But Brazil will...

Nine Dead, 10 Missing in Amazon Boat Wreck

Brazilian ferry collided with barge in dark of lunar eclipse

(Newser) - Nine people died, and 10 more are missing and feared dead after a ferry in Brazil sank this morning after colliding with a barge on the Amazon River, the AP reports. Authorities, who rescued 92 passengers near the town of Itacoatiara, say  "visibility was very poor" at the time...

Despite Laws, Amazon Jungle Disappearing

Even president's tough new measures may not halt rapid deforestation

(Newser) - The deforestation of the Amazon jungle is speeding up, and Brazil may be unable to stop it, Time magazine reports. Over the last five months an estimated 2,700 square miles of forest have been cleared—more than twice the size of Rhode Island. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva...

Whale Beached in Amazon
Whale Beached in Amazon
Nov 18, 2007 7:50 AM CST

Whale Beached in Amazon

Minke stuck on sandbar in the rain forest

(Newser) - Frantic villagers yesterday splashed water to try to save the life of a whale beached in a river in the Amazon rain forest 1,000 miles from the ocean. The 18-foot minke whale was stuck on a sandbar in the Tapajos River in Brazil. "It apparently got separated from...

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