Brazil has approved the controversial construction of a giant hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Amazon, defying a 20-year protest by indigenous and environmental campaigners who say that the project will devastate the surrounding rainforest and threaten the survival of local tribes.

The Belo Monte project on the Xingu river, an Amazon tributary, was started in the 1990s but abandoned amid widespread protests at home and abroad. The rock star Sting led a campaign against the plan with tribal leaders, and revisited Brazil in November last year to urge the Government to consider the impact of deforestation on greenhouse gas levels and global warming.

The US$17 billion (£11 billion) dam in the northern state of Pará will be the world’s third-largest and could provide electricity to 23 million homes, a supply that the Government says is vital to the country’s economic growth. Critics argue that the flooding of 500 sq km of rainforest will damage fish stocks and wildlife and force the displacement of indigenous peoples.

Carlos Minc, the Environment Minister, said on Monday that the land flooded would be a fraction of the 5000 sq km originally planned. “The environmental impact exists but it has been weighed up, calculated and reduced,” he said. “Not one Indian on indigenous land will be displaced.”

However, groups on land not demarcated as tribal territory – a distinction often labelled a get-out clause by indigenous campaigners – still stand to lose their homes. Mr Minc said that they would be compensated. Indigenous groups complain that they were not properly consulted over the project, which Megaron Tuxucumarrae, a chief of the Kayapo tribe, said would destroy the environment that his people had taken care of for millennia. “We are opposed to dams on the Xingu, and will fight to protect our river,” he said.

The state-run company Eletrobrás is said to be eyeing the project, but a contract has not yet been awarded. The winning company will have to spend US$803 million on measures to minimise its impact and resettle an estimated 12,000 people.

Critics said that the Government had underestimated the potential impact in its attempt to meet political ends in an election year. Even within the Government, the project has been so contentious that in November two senior officials from Ibama, Brazil’s environmental agency, resigned, citing political pressure.

With general elections looming in October, the Government is under pressure to deal with energy infrastructure problems that resulted in large swathes of the country, including São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, being plunged into darkness in November.

Engineering experts have questioned the efficiency of the 11-gigawatt dam, which would be outstripped in size only by China’s Three Gorges and Itaipu on the Brazil-Paraguay border.

Francisco Hernández, an electrical engineer and joint co-ordinator of a group of 40 specialists who analysed the project, said that the dam would generate little electricity during the three to four-month dry season. Describing it as a scheme of “doubtful engineering viability”, he said Belo Monte was an extremely complex project “that would interrupt the flow of water courses over an enormous area, requiring excavation of earth and rocks on the scale of that carried out for digging the Panama Canal”.

Up to 70 dams, roads, gas pipelines and power grids worth more than US$30 billion are to be built to tap the region’s raw materials and transport agricultural products.

The announcement drew a furious reaction from environmental groups around the world. Aviva Imhof, the campaigns director of International Rivers, described it as a “foolish investment”, and said that by investing in energy efficiency, Brazil could cut demand by 40 per cent over the next decade and save US$19 billion. “The amount of energy saved would be equivalent to 14 Belo Monte dams,” she said.

Fiona Watson, research director of the UK-based Survival International, said the dam would be a catastrophe for indigenous people. “The Brazilian Government has driven through the dam with a cavalier disregard to indigenous peoples’ rights,” she said. “Development in Brazil comes at an unacceptable price – the destruction of whole tribes.”

A team of scientists working for Reptile & Amphibian Ecology International (RAEI) have discovered a treasure trove of previously undiscovered biodiversity in a rare and dwindling ecosystem in Ecuador. The apparently new species include a slug-sucking snake and 30 species of rain frog.

The snake belongs to a small group of serpents that specialise in eating gastropods – snails and slugs – and the closest relative of this intriguing snake is found in Peru. Another snake, a snail-sucker, just discovered by the researchers may even be a new species. The snail-sucker was first encountered by a 15-year-old volunteer working with the scientists.

The new frogs have an extraordinary life-cycle. Instead of laying eggs in water which hatch into tadpoles, later to metamorphose into the adult form, they lay eggs in trees. The eggs then hatch out into miniature versions of the adults, some barely larger than a pinhead.

Other animals found include a gecko so small that it can perch with ample room to spare on the top of a pencil and three species of lungless salamanders.

A majority of the new species were found in Cerro Pata de Pajaro, a samall mountain just a few minutes from the Pacific Ocean and sitting right atop the Equator. Pata de Pajaro is surrounded by a type of rainforest and capped in cloud forest. The extent of cloud forest on the site is only a couple miles wide, yet houses at least 14 of the 30 new species known nowhere else on Earth.

“There is obviously a great concern that these species will disappear even before, they are formally described by science”, said expedition leader Paul Hamilton of RAEI.

Indeed, sites like Pata de Pajaro are under siege from countless ecological disturbances, from widespread deforestation for cattle grazing to timber harvesting and hunting. Climate change models actually predict that many of these mountaintop cloud forests – along with the animals that depend on them – will disappear altogether if something is not done to save them. The rain frogs just discovered are particularly susceptible to climate change since they rely on moist trees to lay their eggs which may dry up with rising temperatures.

Previous work by the scientists in the area yielded an amazing diversity of reptiles and amphibians, over 140 species in number. Incidentally, the team has found four new species of stick insect (casually known as stick bugs), just from taking photos of these fascinating creatures in the course of research.

“There are countless gaps in our knowledge of tropical animals; this study just scratches the surface of what we know about this region alone, much less what is happening to global patterns of extinction”, said Hamilton.

“The good news is, the animals are still there and alive, so there is still time to save them from extinction,” said Kerry Kriger, Executive Director of the NGO Save the Frogs.

One of the world’s leading climate change gurus urged people to become vegetarian, to help beat global warming.

Nicholas Stern, the author of an influential 2006 review of climate change, said methane emissions from cows and pigs were putting “enormous pressure” on the world and people needed to think about what they ate.

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It put enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better,” he said.

The former World Bank chief economist was speaking ahead of the climate change conference in Copenhagen this December, which is expected to be attended by thousands of delegates from around the world.

Stern said a successful conference would result in higher costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He also compared his stance on meat to the change in attitudes to drink-driving.

“I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he added.

“I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student.

“People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and it has been estimated that livestock accounts for a fifth of the global warming impact.

Stern said if business continued as usual, then temperatures could increase by 5C by early next century.

Many of you will be aware of the issue of so called ‘Blood Diamonds,’ partly due to Leonardo DeCaprio’s fine film. These are stones that were mined in a conflict zone and sold in order to fund a war or an insurgency or to support a warlord’s activities. Few people would like to think that the diamond they wear on their finger as a token of love has actually helped to fund the atrocities of wars that we hear about every day in the international news.

Sadly, less is known about another ethical issue related to the jewellery trade and investment market, namely, the environmental impact of mining and processing precious metals. Ten of thousands of gold miners (small-scale miners and mining transnationals) are wreaking havoc on Latin America’s rainforests and its inhabitants because of their destructive mining techniques. Mining activities cause deforestation and irreversible damage to the ecosystem. There is also the accompanying regional pollution by mercury. Mercury has been found in unsafe quantities in the livers of Amazonian fish which are consumed by indigenous Indian populations and other people. Furthermore, the effects of gold mining threaten the survival of one of the most dominant predators in Latin America – the giant river otter. We should also mention the effect mercury pollution could be having on dolphins, the manatee, the capybara, the anaconda, caiman, river turtles and numerous species of birds. Even without considering mercury pollution, gold mining frequently encroaches on lands legally belonging to indigenous tribes, creating conflict and sometimes violence between miners and Indians.

We are limited in what we can do to minimise this impact but as consumers we do have the power to decrease demand. If you are still determined to buy your loved one a gold ring this Christmas please try and source gold that has been recycled within the trade.

We encourage you to read Brook Larmer’s excellent article “The Real Price of Gold’ on the National Geographic website.

A new monkey has been discovered in a remote region of the Amazon in Brazil, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) .

The monkey is related to saddleback tamarins, which include several species of monkeys known for their distinctively marked backs. The newly described distinct subspecies was first seen by scientists on a 2007 expedition into the state of Amazonas in northwestern Brazil.

Researchers have dubbed the monkey Mura’s saddleback tamarin (saguinus fuscicollis mura) named after the Mura Indians, the ethnic group of Amerindians of the Purus and Madeira river basins where the monkey was found. Historically this tribe was spread through the largest territory of any of the Amazonian Indigenous peoples, extending from the Peruvian frontier today (Rio Yavari) east to the Rio Trombetas.

The saguinus fuscicollis mura saddleback tamarin is mostly gray and dark brown in color, with a distinctly mottled “saddle.” It weighs 213 grams (less than ¾ of a pound) and is 240 millimeters (9 inches tall) with a 320 millimeter (12.6 inch) tail.

“The Wildlife Conservation Society is extremely proud to be part of this exciting discovery in the Amazon,” said Dr. Avecita Chicchon, Director of WCS’s Latin America Programs. “We hope that the discovery will draw attention to conservation in this very fragile but biodiverse region.”

According to the study’s authors, the Mura’s saddleback tamarin is threatened by several planned development projects in the region, particularly a major highway cutting through the Amazon that is currently being paved. Conservationists fear the highway could fuel wider deforestation in the Amazon over the next two decades. Other threats to the region include a proposed gas pipeline and two hydroelectric dams currently in the beginning stages of construction.

“This newly described monkey shows that even today there are still major wildlife discoveries to be made,” said the study’s lead author, Fabio Röhe of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “This discovery should serve as a wake-up call that there is still so much to learn from the world’s wild places, yet humans continue to threaten these areas with destruction.”

The saguinus fuscicollis mura discovery was published in the June online edition of the International Journal of Primatology. Authors of the study include Fabio Röhe of the Wildlife Conservation Society, José de Sousa e Silva Jr. of Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Ricardo Sampaio of the Instituto Nacional de Parquisas de Amaozônia, and Anthony B. Rylands of Conservation International.

A mosquito that has lived on the Galapagos Islands for thousands of years is emerging as a potential threat to the archipelago’s wildlife, because of an increase in tourism.

Scientists fear the endemic insect could pick up diseases from other mainland mosquitoes brought to the Galapagos as stowaways on tourist ships and planes and then transmit the infections to the rare collection of indigenous animals on the islands.

The black salt marsh mosquito distributed throughout the Galapagos is highly unusual because it can feed on the blood of reptiles as well as mammals and birds. But its diverse diet means it could transmit introduced diseases such as West Nile fever to the islands’ rare birds and reptiles which include the giant tortoise, the marine iguana and the flightless cormorant.

One of the greatest fears is that with a boom in tourism to the region, mosquitoes infected with West Nile fever could be introduced to the islands, where they might infect local animals to create a reservoir of disease that the black salt marsh mosquito could then spread throughout the archipelago.

Analysis of the black salt marsh mosquito’s DNA found it must have lived on the islands for about 200,000 years.

On the mainland, the same species of mosquito lives on the blood of birds and mammals but in the Galapagos it has evolved to also live on a diet of reptilian blood, presumably because of the relative shortage of birds, said Arnaud Bataille, from the University of Leeds and the Zoological Society of London. “When we started the work we thought that this species was also introduced by humans [about 200 years ago], so it was a surprise that it turned out to be so ancient,” Dr Bataille said.

“The genetic differences of the Galapagos mosquitoes from their mainland relatives are as large as those between different species, suggesting that the mosquito in Galapagos may be in the process of evolving into a new species.”

The scientists also found that the mosquito, unlike its mainland counterpart which is normally confined to mangroves and coastal salt marshes, has also become adapted to living and breeding in inland sites and at relatively high altitudes, making it widespread throughout the archipelago.

Two other species of mosquito are found in the Galapagos but both are recent introductions and do not seem to live outside of the main centres, suggesting that they are less of a threat to wildlife, Dr Bataille said.

“They are limited to where you find humans and they don’t move much away from humans, so they won’t have as big an impact on spreading disease on to wildlife,” he said.

The study, which is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, concluded that the growth in the number of people visiting the Galapagos Islands as tourists raises the likelihood of mainland mosquitoes infected with wildlife diseases such as avian malaria and West Nile fever making it to the archipelago, accompanied by tourists. West Nile fever has already spread across North America and South America.

“With tourism growing so rapidly, the chance of a disease-carrying mosquito hitching a ride from the mainland on a plane is also increasing, since the number of flights grows in line with visitor numbers,” said Andrew Cunningham, from the Zoological Society of London, the co-author of the study.

“If a new disease arrives via this route, the fear is that the Galapagos’ own mosquitoes would pick it up and spread it throughout the archipelago.”

The scientists said that rather than controlling the islands’ own mosquito, there should be a concerted effort to stop mainland mosquitoes being carried on ships and planes.