Burger-crazy America imports over 200 million pounds of beef from Central America every year. Grazing land is needed, and the only way for grazing land to appear in a densely forested region is from clear-cutting the rainforest.

Farmers, speculators, and ranchers set vast areas ablaze to prepare for the 2008 growing season. A new satellite system provides a more detailed look at forest degradation and may help Brazil stop deforestation before it occurs.

Brazil's Supreme Court sided with Amazonian Indians in a land dispute that some have called critical for determining the future of the rainforest that sprawls the size of Western Europe and provides a critical cushion against global warming.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Austria and Hungary reaffirmed their sovereign right on Monday to ban growing genetically modified maize after EU environment ministers squashed more attempts by the European Commission to lift the restrictions.

OSLO (Reuters) - Governments must do a better job of explaining environmental taxes such as charges on driving in cities or higher electricity bills or risk a public backlash, a study showed on Friday.

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Destruction of the Amazon forest in Brazil accelerated for the first time in four years, the government said on Friday, as high commodity prices tempted farmers and ranchers to slash more trees.

Couple uses contact cement, cardboard splints; trucker provides the lift

This week, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet signed into law a measure that outlaws all whale hunting in the Chilean part of the Pacific Ocean. The law prohibits all types of whale hunting; both commercial and scientific.

Greenpeace has blocked three tankers due to transport crude palm oil to China and Europe from leaving an Indonesian port in a bid to highlight deforestation caused by the cash crop, the environmental group said

Panama -- Yet another nail has been put in the coffin of Japan's dying whaling industry. We've managed to get the Oriental Bluebird, re-supply and transport ship of Japan's whaling fleet, de-flagged and fined, following a legal ruling by Panamanian authori