LAGO DO PURUZINHO/KARIPUNA INDIGENOUS TERRITORY/CALAMA, Brazil — The Lake Puruzinho community sits on a clear, fish-rich lake in the Brazilian Amazon, an area that, at first glance, resembles paradise. Just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the city of Humaitá in Amazonas state, the community is soundtracked by two contrasting noises: the song of birds like the crested oropendola as it flies in search of fruit, and the thunderous engines of vessels plying the Madeira River. For decades, the approximately 170 residents of the riverside community ate fish from the lake, but that changed when they learned about mercury — and discovered that large quantities of the heavy metal were being dumped into the Madeira by illegal gold mining. The river, which feeds Lake Puruzinho and is a tributary of the Amazon, receives an estimated 10-50 metric tons of mercury from dredges used in gold mining. “There was a lot of mercury in our hair [because] of the fish, the tucunaré, which we eat a lot,” says Maria Rogelina Soares da Silva dos Santos, a fisher and homemaker, at the door of her house, located on the shore of Lake Puruzinho. “It was a huge scare.” She’s referring to studies by researchers at the Federal University of Rondônia (UNIR), in which she has participated for 26 years. The research examines how mercury contamination affects fish and, ultimately, human health, focusing on pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and children in communities along the Madeira River. The studies revealed, in recent years, the presence…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A traditional food source for Amazonian communities, freshwater turtles have been included in Brazil’s list of fauna threatened with extinction for the first time. The cágado-iaçá, or six-tubercled Amazon River turtle, had its risk elevated from near threatened to endangered in a new national list recently released by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. Known in the Amazon as tracajás, freshwater turtles have been classified as nearly threatened for a long time, but it’s the first time that one of its species was classified as endangered, said Marília Marini, general coordinator of conservation strategies at ICMBio, the Brazilian agency in charge of conservation units. “For the Amazon, the main highlight is the inclusion of the tracajá,” Marini told Mongabay by phone. “That is a more delicate situation, because it also involves [traditional] communities that use them [for subsistence]. So, great care is needed regarding communication and how to direct actions — ensuring they don’t negatively affect those communities that have historically coexisted with the area.” Despite protection programs and conservation efforts, cágado-iaçá’s (Podocnemis sextuberculata) populations over the past 36 years — equivalent to three generations — declined by more than 50% in Amazonas and western Pará states, which accounts for approximately 70% of the species’ total distribution, leading to an endangered classification, according to ICMBio’s Biodiversity Extinction Risk Assessment System (SALVE). Six-tubercled Amazon River turtle (Podocnemis sextoberculata). Image by © Rafael Bernhard via iNaturalist. CC BY 4.0. Six-tubercled Amazon River turtle (Podocnemis sextoberculata). Image by © Andrés Camilo Montes-Correa…This article was originally published on Mongabay