The Amazon Rainforest is a vital ecosystem to the world.
The Destruction Of The Amazon, Explained
The Amazon rainforest has faced encroachment and deforestation for a long time. But it wasn’t until Brazil’s military dictatorship came to power in the 1970s that deforestation spiked, becoming a big business in the Amazon. When that expansion reached the state of Acre, it met resistance. Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper from the region, took the fight to protect the Amazon from the depths of the rainforest to the global stage. In the process, he gave his life. But the fight he started lives on.
The War For The Amazon’s Most Valuable Trees
The Amazon is a three-part series about the world’s largest rainforest, why it’s in jeopardy, and the people trying to save it.
The Amazon rainforest has faced encroachment and deforestation for a long time. But it wasn’t until Brazil’s military dictatorship came to power in the 1970s that deforestation spiked, becoming a big business in the Amazon. When that expansion reached the state of Acre, it met resistance. Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper from the region, took the fight to protect the Amazon from the depths of the rainforest to the global stage. In the process, he gave his life. But the fight he started lives on.
Brazil’s Indigenous Land Is Being Invaded
Brazil has over 900,000 indigenous people, most of whom live in the Amazon. After centuries of persecution, they were given extensive rights under a new Constitution in the 1980s, including the right to claim and win back their traditional lands. Since then, hundreds of indigenous lands have been demarcated and protected by the Brazilian government.
But in the last few years, those lands have come under attack by landowners, ranchers, loggers, and farmers who want access to the resources inside these indigenous lands. And since Jair Bolsonaro became president, the number of invasions into indigenous lands has skyrocketed.
Over the course of hundreds of scuba dives, marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson fell in love – with a fish. In this ode to parrotfish, she shares five reasons why these creatures are simply amazing (from their ability to poop white sand to make colorful “wardrobe changes”) and shows what’s at stake – for us and them – as climate change threatens the future of coral reefs.
In 2018, people brought a record number of injured wild birds, more than 6,000, to New Jersey’s Raptor Trust for treatment. The organization said there are so many of these challenges in navigating the world that these birds now have to deal with because of their proximity to humans. The journal Science looked at almost five decades of data, discovering that one in four birds in North America, around 3 billion in total, have been lost since 1970. CGTN’s Nick Harper reports on what experts want to do about it.
