"Here in the vast wilderness surrounding Peru's Alto Purús National Park, the locations of [mahogany] trees, worth tens of thousands of dollars in the United States, have become closely guarded secrets among members of indigenous tribes."

"Scientists searching the Amazon have discovered new species -- creatures such as a baldheaded parrot, a blue-fanged tarantula and a bright red catfish -- at the rate of about one every three days for the past 10 years, the World Wildlife Fund reported Monday."

"The Amazon, the world's biggest river, is at its lowest level in over 40 years near its source in northeastern Peru, causing havoc in a region where it is used as the only form of travel, authorities said."

"A study to be published this year by Ecuadorean glaciologist Bolivar Caceres suggests that the country's glaciers lost more than 40% of their surface area between 1956 and 2006."

"Indigenous activists threatened a clash with Brazil's government as they dispatched boats carrying 150 men on Wednesday to occupy the planned site of a controversial hydro-electric dam in the Amazon, a chief said."

"A Brazilian rancher accused of ordering the murder of U.S. nun and Amazon defender Dorothy Stang was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison."

"BELEM, Brazil — A top activist for land reform in Brazil's Amazon has been murdered, police said Thursday."

Trucks full of gunmen sought to kill 64-year old Sister Leonora Brunetto, who had spent decades trying to keep ranchers from stealing Amazon land. "Impunity in the Amazon because of a weak judicial system and corruption among local officials is endemic, a problem not only for people like Brunetto, but for the Brazilian government trying to preserve a rain forest the size of the U.S. west of the Mississippi. More than 20 percent of the forest already has been destroyed."

"For more than 300 years, residents of Colombia's Pacific Coast area of Tumaco have mostly been left alone to fish or grow bananas .... But in recent years, the peace has been disturbed by new security threats, aggravated by climate change."

"Facing the possibility of a $27 billion pollution judgment against it in an Ecuadorean court, Chevron launched an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign to try to prevent the judgment as well as reverse a deeply damaging story line."

"In Lima, Peru, more than 1.3 million people have no access to drinking water. The citizens without it are in the poorest areas, where water trucked in can cost nine times as much as it does in richer areas. So, citizens have had to either make do without running water, or, with the help of a German NGO, make dew into drinking water."

"Power was restored in Brazil after an outage at a dam providing 20 percent of the country's energy thrust about half of the nation's 190 million people into darkness for at least two hours."

"An important opposition deputy this week accused Chile's government of being less than candid with the public about alarming levels of fine particulate pollution found in the nation’s leading cities."

In Brazil's epicenter of deforestation, an environmental group is offering farmers cash to let the forest stand. The question is whether they can make more by clearing the land and farming it.

The indigenous Kamayura tribe in Brazil's rain forest are losing their traditional source of food. The fish are disappearing from their lake as the Amazon region region is made hotter and drier by deforestation -- and some say by climate change.