• Deforestation threatens Brazil's Amazon rainforest

    Mist rolls through a deforested section of the Amazon rainforest on June 8, 2012 in Para state, Brazil.

    photos and reporting by Mario Tama / Getty Images

    The Amazon, home to 60 percent of the world’s largest forest and 20 percent of the Earth’s oxygen, remains threatened by the rapid development of Brazil. The area is populated by over 20 million people and challenged by deforestation, agriculture, mining, a governmental dam building spree and illegal land speculation.

    More than one million hectares of wood have disappeared in protected indigenous reserves between 1987 and 2011, according to the Brazilian government. More than 242 square kilometers in the reserve have already been destroyed according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which tracks rainforest destruction by satellite.

    A truck transports illegally harvested Amazon rainforest logs near protected indigenous land on June 10, 2012 near the Arariboia Indigenous Reserve, Maranhao state, Brazil.

    Workers load charcoal, produced from illegally harvested Amazon rainforest wood, into a truck on June 8, 2012 in Rondon do Para, Brazil.

    Illegal wood charcoal is used to power smelters producing pig iron to make steel for industries including U.S. auto manufacturing, according to Greenpeace. Illegal charcoal camps can result in slave labor and the destruction of rainforest on protected indigenous lands. Over 2,700 charcoal camp workers were liberated from conditions akin to slavery between 2003 and 2011, according to Greenpeace. 

    A worker sweats as he works for $40 per truckload of charcoal.

    Slideshow:

    Mario Tama / Getty Images

    The Amazon rainforest has meant prosperous times for many in Brazil, but environmental and cultural disaster for others.

    Launch slideshow

    Read more about Brazil and the Rio Earth Summit

    See more of Brazil’s environmental balancing act

    See more of Mario Tama's work

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  • California environmentalists say logging a burned forest near Tahoe threatens rare woodpecker

    Rich Pedroncelli / AP

    A rare male black-backed woodpecker near its nest in a dead tree on the edge of where the Angora fire burned near South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

    AP reports that conservationists are pressing the US Forest Service to postpone cutting until after nesting season in August:

    “There are some other unlogged areas they could fly to as long as the nest core area was protected, but if that’s gone, the chicks would just starve to death,” said Rachel Fazio, a lawyer for the group who argued their case last May 14 before a three-judge panel at the federal appellate court in San Francisco.

    Fazio said it is ironic that the Forest Service and the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science are co-hosting the third annual Lake Tahoe Bird Festival on Saturday at the Taylor Creek Visitor Center just a few miles from the woodpeckers’ nest.

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    Rich Pedroncelli / AP

    A sign warns hikers they are entering an area that is being cleared of dead trees burned in the 2007 Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Rare woodpecker chicks in burned forest stands at Lake Tahoe won't survive if the U.S. Forest Service proceeds with a contentious post-fire logging project, according to conservationists pressing the agency to postpone cutting around the trees until after the nesting season in August.

    Rich Pedroncelli / AP

    In this photo taken Monday, May 28, 2012, trees that have been cleared as part of a post-fire logging project are seen stacked for removal at the site of the 2007 Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe.

    Rich Pedroncelli / AP

    Chad Hanson, executive director of the John Muir Project, marks a tree, slated to be removed, that holds the nest and chicks of the rare black-backed woodpecker, at the site of the 2007 Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe.

  • Villagers in Mexico resist illegal loggers and their armed guards

    Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP - Getty Images

    A masked man, member of the security comission of Cheran village, in Michoacan State, stands guard in a barrier at the main entrance of the town on May 4, 2011. Since last April, around 17,000 people from an indigenous group in western Mexico have been blocking access to their community and declared a "state of siege" against armed groups protecting illegal loggers, who have deforested 80 percent of some 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares) of the region's forests in more than three years, according to the community. The community started the blockade after armed men fired on some of its members, after they captured illegal loggers to hand them over to the authorities.

    Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP - Getty Images

    A masked man, member of the security comission of Cheran, patrols the forest, in Michoacan State, on May 4, 2011.

    Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP - Getty Images

    Masked members of Cheran village stand guard in a barrier at the main entrance of the town, in Michoacan State, on May 4, 2011.

    For more about the resistance to illegal logging, see this story.