Peruvian authorities turned down a bid to renew Frontera Energy's oil contract for Bloc 192 in the upper Amazon after the oilfield was occupied by indigenous protesters, prompting the Canadian company to declare force majeure. Local communities launched the occupation to demand that they be consulted before a decision was made on renewing the contract.
Peru's Transport and Communications Ministry signed a contract with Chinese state-owned engineering giant SinoHydro to build the Hidrovía Amazónica, a mega-project aimed at turning the major rivers of the Amazon into arteries for delivering the resources of the rainforest basin to foreign markets. The government claims to have carried out a "prior consultation" with impacted communities along the rivers, having won 40 agreements to proceed with work.
Prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation after reports that illegal gold-miners on a remote Amazon river massacred members of an "uncontacted" indigenous band. Two gold-miners have been arrested in the case. The killings allegedly took place last month in the Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory, known as the "Uncontacted Frontier," as it shelters more isolated peoples than anywhere else on Earth.
Brazil's government issued an order abolishing a vast national reserve in the Amazon in order to open up the area to mineral exploitation. The National Reserve of Copper and Associated (RENCA), covering an area larger than Denmark, straddles the northern states of Amapa and Pará, and is thought to be rich in gold, iron, manganese and other minerals. Opposition Senator Randolfe Rodrigues denounced the move as "the biggest attack on the Amazon of the last 50 years."
Peru's government has mobilized thousands of National Police agents to the buffer zone of Tambopata National Reserve in the Madre de Dios region to evict illegal gold-miners operating in the area.
Bolivia and Brazil agreed to coordinate their military forces to fight criminal gangs that operate on their shared jungle border, long porous for drug and arms traffickers.
Thousands of indigenous protesters clashed with police outside the congress building in Brasilia, during a demonstration over territorial and land rights in the Brazilian Amazon.
Ecuador's government has deployed drones and helicopters to the Amazon village of El Tink, where indigenous residents are blocking roads in a dispute over a mining project.
The Inter-Oceanic Highway, long a focus of protest in Peru's Amazon, is at issue in the corruption scandal implicating ex-president Alejandro Toledo.
A New Year's Day prison riot in Brazil's Amazon riverport city of Manaus left up to 60 dead—with many of the bodies decapitated, mutilated and burned.
Indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon are joining with ecologists to oppose a "mega-dam" complex the government has announced for the Río Beni.
Illegal gold mining in Peru has razed almost 62,500 hectares of rainforest—an area over ten times the size of Manhattan—over the past four years.
