Amazon land protection project making gains"The creation of the reserve will stop a network of colossal open-pit gold mining operations."
Hello and welcome to Ekō News. We’re taking the next two weeks off for the holiday, so we’ll see you in 2026! Land, protectingAlejandro Arteaga is the CEO of Khamai Foundation, a US and Ecuador based nonprofit which advocates for biodiversity and saving rainforests. Working with Ekō, the organization has developed a reserve in the Amazon, but much remains to be done. We caught up with Arteaga and asked him some questions about the work—and what challenges remain. How is the land protection project going? The Pitalala Reserve urgent land expansion that will incorporate the 78-hectare land lot into the reserve should be completed thanks to an upcoming grant from Ekó. The next step is to obtain funding to pay for taxes and legal fees necessary for recognition of the purchase of the land. However, this is just the first step, as we seek to protect an area of over 10,000 hectares that will create a wildlife corridor between the Llanganates National Park and the Jatun Sacha Reserve. What challenges are you facing? The protected land is surrounded by many land lots that may be destroyed with incredible speed and without notice, which would render the saved plot isolated. What successes have you had this year? Thanks to Ekō and 152 other backers, we will have protected the first 150 hectares of Pitalala Reserve. This is just the beginning. Ultimately, we seek to create a protected area inside the “biodiversity vertex,” a 100 km2 quadrant holding the ABSOLUTE greatest number of animal and plant species per unit area anywhere on Earth, hoping to secure its designation as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The creation of the reserve will stop a network of colossal open-pit gold mining operations through the direct purchase of various rainforest land lots totaling 2,200 hectares. If you want to contribute to the upcoming grant Alejandro mentions, you can do so here. In other newsGaza is choking on waste There may be a “ceasefire” in place in Gaza—your mileage may vary on how real that is—but the territory isn’t free of the infrastructural danger from years of relentless bombing and attacks. Garbage disposal is one such issue. Tons of untreated waste are beside refugee tents in Gaza, exposing people to toxic gases and disease. “We don’t sleep—not at night, nor during the day—because of the garbage. The smell comes at us constantly, and our children are ill. They suffer from severe headaches. We’re dealing with an infestation of germs and insects.”—Amin Sabri, Gaza City Heatwave 2026 is expected to be one of the hottest years on record, continuing a trend. That’s according to the UK Met Office’s central forecast, which projects temperatures in excess of 1.4C above preindustrial levels. “This highlights how rapidly we are now approaching the 1.5C Paris agreement target.”—Nick Dunstone, Met Office climate scientist Here’s your campaign of the day
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