Apparently the girl had wandered away from her Awá tribe village, which consists of around 60 members who all live in complete isolation with the modern world, when she was captured by illegal loggers. Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, said to Brazilian news sources that the loggers had tied the girl to a tree and then burned her alive. According to Guajajaras this was meant to be a warning to other indigenous tribes who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão.

“She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death,” Guajajaras said.

News and evidence of this story are unfortunately few and limited. But this is understandable considering where the murder took place. But a third party, the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) which is a Catholic group, have said that they have seen footage of the girl’s charred remains.

Survival International, an organization which works for indigenous people’s rights around the world, reports that large areas of the Awá tribe’s territories have been destroyed by illegal logging. Members from the Awá tribe have been attacked by loggers before.

“The Awá rely on their forest to survive, but vast numbers of loggers are illegally invading their land, which now suffers one of the highest deforestation rates in the Amazon. More than 30% of one of the Awá’s territories has already been destroyed. […]The Awá have recently suffered a series of brutal attacks, and loggers have warned that the Indians will be killed if they go into their forest.”

FUNAI, a Brazilian government agency that is responsible for mapping out and protecting lands traditionally inhabited by indigenous people, have said that they are seeking more information about the reported murder. But I would expect it’ll be hard to find any substantial evidence in the Amazon forest two or even three months later.

But this is not an isolated case. CIMI reports that around 450 indigenous people have been killed by loggers between 2003 and 2010, and these are numbers that are acknowledged by FIMI. For example, last year the famous Amazon rainforest activist José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva was killed in an ambush near his home in Brazil. But it’s not just in Brazil that loggers are attacking people. In 2008, peaceful activists who were protecting an old-growth forest in Tasmania, Australia, was violently attacked by timber workers.

Six months after predicting his own murder, a leading rainforest defender has reportedly been gunned down in the Brazilian Amazon. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, are said to have been killed in an ambush near their home in Nova Ipixuna, in Pará state, about 37 miles from Marabá. According to a local newspaper, Diário do Pará, the couple had not had police protection despite getting frequent death threats because of their battle against illegal loggers and ranchers.

Da Silva said in a speech at TEDxAmazonia in November last year that he was afraid loggers would try to kill him:

“I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment … because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers, and that is why they think I cannot exist. [People] ask me, ‘are you afraid?’ Yes, I’m a human being, of course I am afraid. But my fear does not silence me. As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest.”

Al Jazeera correspondent Gabriel Elizondo is, one of the few journalist, at the scene covering the murder of rainforest defender Da Silva. You can follow his reporting on Twitter under the hashtag #ZeClaudio. You can also watch his report below:

Watch the speech he gave at TEDxAmazonia last year:

Zé Cláudio Ribeiro lives in the Maraba, in Para, producing nuts in a sustainable way and resisting the construction boom in the Amazon, and the pressure to bring down these impressive trees. He has received several death threats.

Related: Environmental activists violently attacked by timber workers and Greenpeace activist violently attacked by bluefin tuna fishermen

Sometimes researchers are blamed of being alarmists stirring up fears of a fictional dystopia by the business-as-usual crowd. But it seems a forewarning of conflict over oil in Peru is proceeding according to exactly such a warning. The news first…

40+ dead at protest

In extension of free trade agreements the Peruvian government has plans for ‘developing’ the Amazon homelands of many indigenous communities – opening it for oil, mineral, logging, and agricultural exploitation. Locals have been protesting some of these initiatives claiming they are unconstitutional and in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. When police intervened fighting erupted. Body counts wary; one is as high as 81.

President Alan Garcia Perez is claimed to have been behind a massacre on suspects of being Maoist guerrillas in 1986. A former army colonel turned politician is siding with the protesters. An arrest warrant has been issued on protest leader Alberto Pizango who has gone into hiding.

Sources: Upside Down World / 50 Days of Protest and One Massacre in the Peruvian Amazon | Peruanista blog | The New York Times / 9 Hostage Officers Killed at Peruvian Oil Facility | AP / 9 more police killed in Amazon protests in Peru | AP / At least 31 killed in Peru Amazon clashes | Mongobay / Oil or Death in the Amazon

Peer reviewed prophesies

A 2008 paper on PLoS ONE discussed this ongoing and accelerating exploitation in “the most species-rich part of the Amazon”. From the paper:

Without improved policies, the increasing scope and magnitude of planned extraction means that environmental and social impacts are likely to intensify. [... We] consider the conflicts where the blocks overlap indigenous peoples’ territories.

Oil and gas development in the western Amazon has already caused major environmental and social impacts. Direct impacts include deforestation for access roads, drilling platforms, and pipelines, and contamination from oil spills and wastewater discharges.

In Peru, hydrocarbon blocks now overlap 20 protected areas. Thirteen of these protected areas preceded creation of the oil blocks and lack compatibility studies required by the Protected Areas Law.

the history of oil and gas extraction in the western Amazon is one of massive ecological and social disruption, the future need not repeat the past.

No, it need not. But it just did. Heed the warnings of those who reason with statistics and logic.

Finer, M., Jenkins, C., Pimm, S., Keane, B., & Ross, C. (2008). Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples PLoS ONE, 3 (8) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002932

Photo credit: Independent Journalist via Amazon Watch

If you are looking for a way to save trees by reading books on an e-reader but you don’t like the Sony Reader or can’t use the Amazon Kindle you might want to check out the Cool-er e-reader.

The Cool-er (Yes, that the actual name of the e-reader. And no, it’s not cool.) e-reader looks like one of those colorful ipods, although it’s a bit bigger. The Cool-er e-reader will offer a larger library of books than the Amazon Kindle and will sell the digital books in the open EPub format.

In USA the Cool-er user will be able to choose from around 260,000 paid-for titles at launch from all the major publishers. In Europe we will initially only have around 60,000 titles to choose from.

The e-reader will be available in the USA and Europe early June this year and cost $249.

“Based in Chicago, Heartland promotes the idea that there is a “debate” about global warming despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for it. The Institute also creates research that downplays the dangers of secondhand smoke.”

“Contributions to the Heartland Institute have flowed from the likes of Exxon, Phillip Morris, and the ultraconservative Scaife Foundation. The Institute stopped disclosing its funders in 2006 after it came under attack for producing tailor-made research in support of its industry supporters.”

The Amazon Defense Coalition says that the disclosure of Southgate’s affiliation is bound to raise questions about Chevron’s commitment to green policies. According to the coalition Chevron has fallen significantly behind its industry rivals in these matters.

“Unlike industry peers Shell and BP, Chevron has no significant human rights policy for countries where it operates and currently faces numerous environmental problems around the globe — including a potential $16.3 billion liability for toxic dumping in Ecuador’s Amazon.”

Southgate has already been busy in the news reports trying to defend Chevron’s practices. This includes the dumping of more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways and the abandonment of more than 900 waste pits gouged out of the jungle floor in Ecuador.

“The indigenous groups in Chevron’s former concession area have seen their populations decimated and ancestral lands plagued by the toxic contamination. Amazonian communities have long charged that Chevron has fabricated “junk science” to cover up the fact thousands of soil samples produced in the Ecuador trial demonstrate life-threatening levels of contamination. An independent, court-appointed expert who reviewed 54,000 chemical sampling results recently found that 100% of Chevron’s former well sites are contaminated with illegal levels of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons.”

Besides Southgate the Amazon Defense Coalition says Chevron has hired other questionable “scientists”. Ralph Marquez, a former chief lobbyist for the chemical industry in Texas, and Sara McMillen, a Chevron scientist who speaks to the media about toxicological issues without having a degree in the subject.

The Amazon Defense Coalition also criticises Chevron for their “human energy” greenwashing advertising campaign, saying that the “oil giant’s ad campaign touts a “green” image while Amazon humanitarian crisis festers.”

“Chevron’s so-called ‘green’ advertising campaign is a fraud when compared to the company’s environmental record in the Amazon,” said Pablo Fajardo, an Ecuadorian lawyer and Goldman Prize winner who leads the Ecuador case.

“Chevron is paying academics to distort research to hide a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe in Ecuador,” said Fajardo. “Their advertising budget would be better spent on solving real problems.”

To make people realize that saving the planet starts with them saving paper, we took a standard paper dispenser and made a simple modification with green foil and the silhouette of South America. This allowed us to prove that the survival of the forest is directly connected to what people consume.

You can see a larger version of the ad here. You can also check out this clever ad on a bridge in Amsterdam.