Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos announced plans to strengthen enforcement efforts to protect oil companies operating in the southern Amazonian department of Caquetá Aug. 29. The move comes following a wave of guerilla attacks on oil operations in the area—apparently in retaliation for their failure to pay protection money. Santos called on the civilian population to report extortion by illegal armed groups in order to combat the practice in a more "energetic" way. (Colombia Reports, Aug. 29) In the most recent attack, on Aug. 18, a tanker truck of the firm Transamazonía, subcontracted by the UK-based Emerald Energy, was hit with gunfire by presumed FARC guerillas near an Vicente del Caguán. Companies operating in the zone had been making payments to the FARC for years, but suspended the practice after Santos warned that any company engaging in it would be banned form the country. (RCN Radio, Aug. 18; Radio Caracol, Colombia Reports, Aug. 5)

On Aug. 23, Peru's Congress unanimously approved a new law that guarantees indigenous peoples' right to free, prior and informed consent to any projects affecting them and their lands. President Ollanta Humala says he supports consultation, and has 15 days to sign the bill into law. The "Prior Consultation Law" complies with commitments set out in ILO Convention 169, the only international standard designed to protect tribal people’s rights.

Indigenous people in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia are preparing to set out Aug. 15 on the long overland march to La Paz to protest plans for a trans-oceanic highway to be built with the backing of the Brazilian government. The march will depart from Trinidad, the capital of the northeastern department of Beni. The decision to launch the protest march follows a breakdown of talks between the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia (CIDOB) and the central government. The protest march seeks to protect some 15,000 people belonging to the Yuracaré, Trinitario and Chimán indigenous groups living in the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS), to be traversed by the road. The Brazilian firm OAS is about to begin construction on the stretch of the highway linking San Ignacio de Moxos, Beni, to Villa Tunari, in Cochabamba. The highway is to eventually continue to Arequipa, Peru. The indigenous peoples of the TIPNIS are prepared to use "bows and arrows" to halt the project, said CIDOB leader Pedro Moye.

The head of Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, is to make an emergency visit to a remote Amazon outpost amid fears that members of an isolated tribe may have been "massacred" by drug traffickers. The move comes after a guard post protecting the "uncontacted" people was overrun by heavily-armed men, believed to be drug-traffickers from neighboring Peru. The post was ransacked and equipment destroyed. Fears mounted for the welfare of the indigenous bands after FUNAI workers found a rucksack apparently abandoned by one of the traffickers with a broken arrow inside. A rapid aerial survey has shown no trace of the uncontacted group, which made global headlines after being filmed from the air earlier this year. The post is located on the edge of the Xinane Isolated Indigenous Territory along the Río Envira in Acre state, some 32 kilometers from the border with Peru's department of Madre de Dios.

Days before a new administration in Lima is to take power, Peru's indigenous affairs agency INDEPA proposed new regulations that would allow oil and gas exploitation within Amazon rainforest reserves that have been established to protect indigenous groups that are considered "uncontacted," or in "voluntary isolation." Opening these reserves to industrial exploitation was a longtime goal of the outgoing administration of President Alan García. The proposed "Supervisory Regulation on Exploratory and Extractive Activities within State Territorial and Indigenous Reserves," was presented by INDEPA to the Ministry of Culture, the agency's parent body, on July 8, and immediately sparked an outcry from indigenous rights advocates. Peru's Amazonian indigenous federation, AIDESEP, charged that the proposed regulation violates Law 28736, which established the reserves, the Law for the Protection of Indigenous and Original Peoples in Situations of Isolation or Initial Contact. AIDESEP noted that the move coincides with plans to expand the massive Camisea gas fields in the rainforest of Cusco region, where exploration Block 88 overlaps the Nahua-Kugapakori Reserve, which is believed to protect several uncontacted bands. On July 15, INDEPA announced that the new regulation would be suspended pending "consultation" with indigenous and social organizations.

Some 180 hectares (450 acres) of rainforest in the Amazon were defoliated using a potent mix of herbicides dropped by airplane, reports IBAMA, Brazil's environmental law enforcement agency. The affected area, which is south of the city of Canutama and near the Mapinguari Jacareúba/Katawixi indigenous reservation in Rondônia state, was first detected by Brazil's deforestation monitoring system. A subsequent helicopter overflight last month by IBAMA revealed thousands of trees largely stripped of their vegetation. Authorities later found nearly four tons of chemicals—2,4 - D AMINE 72, U46BR, Garlon 480, and mineral oil—along trans-Amazon highway 174. The herbicides would have been enough to defoliate roughly 3,000 hectares (7,500 acres) of forest, presumably to be cleared for cattle ranching or agriculture.

The Kichwa people of Sarayaku, a remote community in Ecuador's Amazonian province of Pastaza, have brought suit against the Quito government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica. The case charges that Ecuador signed a contract with Argentina's General Combustible Company (CGC) to explore and drill and drill for oil in an area known as Block 23, covering part of Sarayaku’s ancestral territory, in 1996. The indigenous community was not consulted, even though it was granted legal title to its lands in 1992. In 2002 and early 2003, the Ecuadoran armed forces occupied the lands in question as workers began seismic testing, at which time Sarayaku leaders were threatened and harassed for defending their territory, the suit charges.

Health workers in Colombia's remote southeast report that an outbreak of respiratory disease has struck one of the Amazon’s last nomadic tribes—whose numbers have already been decimated by flu and malaria. Around 35 members of the Nukak-Maku people, including nine children, have been admitted to the hospital at departmental capital San José del Guaviare. Local health director Héctor Muñoz told Colombia's RCN radio that the hospital is well over capacity, leaving some Nukak with only make-shift beds. Many members of the tribe have been living in a refugee camp on the outskirts of San José since being pushed out of their rainforest home by illegal armed groups and drug traffickers. Since they first emerged from the forest in 1988, more than half the tribe has been wiped out.