Freshwater dolphins navigate the waterways of the Amazon Basin. In the wet season, water spills from the rivers, flooding parts of the forests. The dolphins go, too, using their exceptionally…
Amazon river dolphins navigate the complex waterways of the forest, their pods spread across the Amazon Basin in six different countries. The routes of these large, pink mammals are naturally…
In 2005, fishers in northern Thailand captured a Mekong giant catfish of gargantuan proportions. Tipping the scales at 293 kilograms (646 pounds), the critically endangered Pangasianodon gigas raised a question…
Brazil’s Amazon dam plans have been slowed down over the past decade due to realization by the country’s electrical authorities that obtaining environmental licenses would be difficult when Indigenous peoples…
Amazon Basin urban centers are contaminating the Amazon, Negro, Tapajós and Tocantins rivers with pharmaceuticals and wastewater, with still largely unknown impacts on aquatic ecosystems.
Illegal mining in protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon saw as much as a fivefold increase since 2010, a gold rush driven largely by surging prices in international markets. Over…
Diogo de Souza used to wake up at 3 a.m., stop by the house of a community member who knew about manatees, and the two began work among the carapanãs,…
Editor’s note: Tim Killeen provides an update on the state of the Amazon in his new book “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness – Success and Failure in the Fight…
Record floods are battering the western and central Amazon, inundating Manaus and other communities and wrecking crops. To prevent future extreme weather events, deforestation and carbon emissions must be controlled.
On June 17th a judicial decision marks a new phase for the struggle over water flow to the “Volta Grande” (“Big Bend”) of Brazil’s Xingu River between the two dams…
It’s been called a “river monster,” and for good reason. The arapaima (Arapaima gigas) is a freshwater fish that can grow longer than a horse and weigh up to 200…
Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s state of Amazonas, has gained worldwide notoriety for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, first for the collapse of its hospital system in April 2020…
Brazil’s Ferrovia Paraense (FEPASA) railroad will run from Pará state’s rainforest interior to the Amazon estuary; traditional communities say they haven’t yet been consulted as required by international law.
Brazil has been mined for gold, bauxite, manganese and more. While companies, investors and nations benefit, the Amazon’s people often haven’t, as they’ve lost traditional cultures, livelihoods and health.
Almost a fifth of Brazil’s soy and grains already flow down Amazonia’s rivers. Now a boom in private river port construction, with little government oversight, further threatens the region’s waterways.
Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet: the Amazon carries more than five times the volume of world's…
When harvest season comes to the Amazon, Irlene das Graças da Cunha de Figueiredo’s day revolves around fish. During a handful of days every year, when the floodwaters of the…
Worsening Amazon floods with reduced fish catches, along with government policies that shred welfare programs and encourage deforestation, are increasing food insecurity in riverine communities.
A survey of 40,000 existing and 3,700 planned dams finds that the structures could fragment fish habitat in the Amazon, Niger, Congo, Salween and Mekong river systems by 25% or more.
A major six nation study finds that the arrau is thriving mostly in river systems where conservationists are active, but not elsewhere; climate change looms as a major threat.
In 2013, a team of researchers surveying insects in a research station on the banks of the Amazon River in northern Peru set up a light trap. The large, brightly…
From the Amazon and Orinoco river basins in South America, researchers have described six new species of catfish that have tentacles on their faces, spines sticking out from their heads, and…
Archaeologists have over the past few decades uncovered a growing body of evidence suggesting the pre-Columbian Amazon was not the sparsely populated, pristine rainforest it was widely believed to have…
Study: 142 existing and under construction Andean dams are fragmenting the Amazon, putting ecosystems at risk and impacting up to 30 million people. Another 160 dams are planned.
Rivers in the Amazon are cycling between increasingly severe states of flood and drought, as predicted by climate change models, and the results are directly impacting local wildlife and the…
During the wet season, manatees swim Amazon basin floodplains; in dry times they migrate to lakes. Hundreds of planned dams could disrupt that cycle.
Study warns that six hydroelectric mega-dams proposed for Andean highlands would put environment and food security at risk in Amazon basin.
A French oil giant suffered a set back in its bid to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon river. Ibama, Brazil's environmental regulator, today rejected Total SA's…
Tool helps communities, researchers, policymakers, activists assess a proposed dam’s economic viability, greenhouse gas emissions and more.
Over thirty years ago, armed with a romantic dream of studying dolphins and a motorboat engine borrowed from a friend, Dr. Fernando Trujillo set off towards the small Amazonian village…
