Earth Month 2026: From Data to Headlines

April 8, 2026

How Amazon Conservation and the Pulitzer Center are using Amazon Mining Watch to track illegal gold mining and make data accessible for journalists

Protecting the Amazon Rainforest at scale goes beyond compiling data. It requires collaboration across borders, organizations, policymakers, people, and diverse audiences, especially with those who help bring critical issues into the public eye.

As part of our Earth Month campaign, The Power of Collective Action: Mobilizing Conservation at Scale Across the Amazon, we are highlighting how partnerships help turn knowledge into action. One example is our collaboration with the Pulitzer Center, a U.S.-based news media organization that raises awareness about underreported global issues and sponsors independent reporting. Together, we are working to ensure that timely, high-quality information about illegal gold mining reaches journalists, decision-makers, and the public in order to help drive awareness, accountability, and action across the region.

“Partnerships like this expand our work as a trusted source of scientific data and resources, helping ensure that journalists have access to reliable and timely information to inform their reporting,” said Priscila Steffen, Communications and Public Relations Manager at Amazon Conservation.

 

 

The recent launch of the Amazon Mining Watch’s Panorama reporting series marks a major step forward in making complex data more accessible and actionable. The inaugural report covering October through December 2025 revealed that in just these three months, approximately 6,000 hectares (14,000 acres) of forest were lost to gold mining across the Amazon, a stark reminder of the speed and scale of this growing threat. But data alone does not create change. Through our partnership with the Pulitzer Center, this information is being translated into stories that reach global audiences and bring local realities to international attention. By combining satellite-based monitoring with data-driven and investigative journalism, we are expanding public awareness of illegal mining as a transboundary issue that affects ecosystems, Indigenous territories, and communities across the entire Amazon Basin.

“At the Pulitzer Center, we believe in inspiring action to protect the Amazon Rainforest through collaborative, breakthrough journalism that goes beyond the headlines. We leverage powerful tools, such as Amazon Mining Watch, to transform data into stories that empower communities, promote transparency, and foster stronger governance and collaboration among stakeholders,” shared Jonatan Rodriguez, Program Manager for Latin America at the Pulitzer Center.

A key pillar of this collaboration is equipping journalists with the tools and knowledge needed to investigate and report on illegal mining. The Pulitzer Center is supporting journalists in learning how to use the Amazon Mining Watch platform to identify leads, investigate trends, and uncover stories that might otherwise remain hidden. This approach strengthens not only individual reporting, but also the broader ecosystem of environmental journalism to enable consistent, data-driven coverage of illegal gold mining, one of the Amazon’s most urgent challenges.

This collaboration also extends beyond reporting by individual journalists and media outlets. During a recent regional meeting in Colombia organized by Amazon Conservation and our partners on our Combating Illegal Mining project and thanks to support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Pulitzer Center shared tools for and approaches to collaborative journalism with partners from across the Amazon.

These resources, including a guide on cross-border reporting and “journalistic symbiosis,” are designed to help journalists collaborate more effectively, with civil society sharing data, insights, and narratives that reflect the interconnected nature of the Amazon Rainforest, while also encouraging forward-thinking journalism and projects with extended impact to help protect this vital ecosystem. 

This close partnership is key to amplifying the impact of collective action through Amazon Mining Watch. By bringing together scientists, technical experts, and journalists, we are not only improving how information is generated, but also how it is shared, understood, and used. Protecting the Amazon at scale depends on making the invisible visible and on working together to turn knowledge into action. 

About Amazon Mining Watch
Developed through a partnership between Amazon Conservation, Earth Genome, and the Pulitzer Center, the Amazon Mining Watch platform aims to strengthen transparency and help decision-makers respond more effectively to illegal gold mining, one of the Amazon’s fastest-growing drivers of deforestation, as well as to help international media report on the escalating threats to nature, people, and wildlife.

 

This Earth Month, we invite you to be part of something bigger. 

Together, we have the power to protect the Amazon, and our planet.