Gold Mining is one of the major deforestation drivers across the Amazon, often targeting remote areas such as protected areas and indigenous territories. Given the vastness of the Amazon, accurately monitoring mining deforestation in the most real-time, up-to-date format has been a challenge. To help better analyze deforestation patterns, our latest MAAP report, MAAP #212, […]

Our newest MAAP report, MAAP #196, shows the results of the socio-environmental impacts caused by illegal mining using a unique tool, the “Illegal Gold Mining Impact Calculator” developed by Conservation Strategy Fund – CSF. Illegal gold mining has generated massive deforestation in the southern Peruvian Amazon (MAAP #208), and has contaminated the area’s major rivers, tributaries, and secondary […]

Thanks to support from USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and NORAD (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation), we’ve been able to publish a series of reports on the dynamic situation of gold mining in the southern Peruvian Amazon over the past several years. Illegal gold mining continues to raise concern in this area, eliminating […]

Primary forests in the Colombian Amazon are at risk from a variety of drivers such as illegal roads, which expose them to further threats of deforestation due to cattle pastures, land grabbing, and coca production. These illegal roads threaten protected areas, national parks, and Indigenous territories (referred to as  Resguardos in Colombia). Our newest report, […]

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 […]