Dozens of new oil and gas concessions have cropped up in recent years in the Amazon’s most biodiverse and pristine regions, propelled by strong world oil prices and the discovery of large oil and gas reserves. A recent study shows state and multinational companies now hold more than 180 oil and gas blocks covering 680,000 square kilometers (170 million acres) in the western Amazon. The new concessions, most of them granted since 2004 in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and western Brazil, could threaten hundreds of species of birds, primates and amphibians as well as numerous isolated Indian tribes, according to the study by Duke University and the U.S.-based non-governmental groups Save America’s Forests and Land is Life. Many of the concessions overlap national... [Log in to read more]