Last year,  in collaboration with the organization SOS Orinoco, we published an urgent report about illegal mining on top of a sacred tepui in the heart of Yapacana National Park in the Venezuelan Amazon (MAAP #169). These Tepuis are stunning table-top mountains found in northern South America and are considered sacred by indigenous groups of the region. MAAP #169 documented 425 illegal […]

In a series of previous reports such as  MAAP #151 and  MAAP #182, we warned about the emergence of alluvial mining in the Ecuadorian Amazon, specifically in the area around the Punino River. In our latest report, MAAP #206, we highlight the rapid growth of gold mining activity in the Punino area: 784 hectares in […]

MAAP #204 analyzes a new road project entering the western sector of the Waorani Indigenous Territory, located in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon. This road would cross 42 kilometers of primary forest from the Nushiño River to the community of Toñampade, bringing the potential of opening new deforestation fronts along the route. Although this road project was […]

MAAP #202 presents a model river conservation strategy proposed by the Ecuadorian Rivers Institute that is designed to protect strategic free-flowing river corridors with the intent to conserve freshwater resources and their surrounding riparian forests, encourage sustainable economic alternatives, and preserve free-flowing ecological connectivity at the basin scale. Their protection and management are an urgent […]

The environmental news platform Mongabay recently reported that, according to their review of official documents, the government of Suriname is preparing to clear large tracts of Amazon rainforest for agriculture. This news is alarming because large-scale agriculture is not historically or currently a deforestation driver in Suriname, so these new plots would likely trigger unprecedented forest loss in […]

  Our first MAAP report published in March 2015 looked at the escalating gold mining deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon. Now, over the past 8.5 years, MAAP has continued to examine the most urgent deforestation-related issues across the Amazon, providing vital information to raise awareness and inspire solutions to protect one of the planet’s most […]

As national policymakers begin the global COP28 climate summit in Dubai, we provide here a concise update on the current state of Amazon forest loss and remaining carbon reserves, both based on the latest cutting-edge data. Here, in MAAP #201, we find that there has been a dramatic reduction (over one-half, 55.8%) in primary forest loss from 2022-2023, […]

MAAP #199 provides an update on the current state of remaining Amazon carbon reserves. Presenting the newly updated version of NASA’s GEDI data, which uses lasers aboard the International Space Station to provide cutting-edge estimates of aboveground biomass density on a global scale, we take a first look at striking maps of the current aboveground […]

Our newly published MAAP #197 report presents our most comprehensive analysis of mining across the Amazon to date. As illegal gold mining continues to be one of the major issues facing nearly all Amazonian countries, the information in these reports incorporates major gold mining operations in rivers with its deforestation effects, estimating that there are at least 58 […]

Based on previous reports (e.g.  MAAP #188), the Peruvian Amazon is facing massive deforestation by Mennonite colonies.  Our latest publication from MAAP #192 demonstrates through very high-resolution satellite imagery (0.5 meters from Planet’s Skysat fleet) that these Mennonite colonies (Chipiar, Providencia, and Vanderland), located in the regions of Loreto and Ucayali, caused the large scale […]