Group items tagged

"Yesterday, Brazilian politicians took a decisive step towards opening the door to massive new Amazon deforestation, by voting in favor of radical changes to the Brazilian Forest Code - the primary legal instrument for protecting the Amazon.  If these changes become law they will let hundreds of forest criminals off the hook, and massively expand the amount of forest under threat from the chainsaws"

British supermarkets are driving a new wave of rapid destruction of the Amazon rainforest by using meat from farms responsible for illegal deforestation, according to a three-year investigation by Greenpeace

"Satellite flyovers of newly cleared land in the Amazon have uncovered a vanished civilization that could rival the Incans or Aztecs in sophistication. Researchers found mysterious geometric trenches and other earthworks carved into the landscape as early as a decade ago, but satellites have paved the way for the discovery of over 200 giant structures."

New research shows that the 2010 Amazon drought may have been even more devastating to the region's rainforests than the unusual 2005 drought, which was previously billed as a one-in-100 year event.

The seed dispersal activities of many animals is essential for the Amazon and other forests, because, as Anderson explains: "plants rely on the seed dispersal activities of these animals (i.e. birds, bats, monkeys, tapirs, rodents, and fish) to move seeds away from the mother tree to good sites for germination […] For pioneer species like Cecropia (a genus of tree that we studied), seeds might need light gaps to germinate-that is, seeds might have very specific requirements for germination."