Saying it "has not complied with the aims for which it was created" in 1998, Ecuador's government withdrew the legal charter of the Quito-based non-governmental organization Acción Ecológica, effectively ordering the group closed. The order, issued March 2 by Health Minister Caroline Chang and made public a week later, was protested by Acción Ecológica as "unconstitutional."

Ecuador's trans-Andean Heavy Crude Pipeline (OCP) is back on line following a rupture that spilled 14,000 barrels in the Amazon region. The pipeline was shut for seven days following the Feb. 24 leak near the rainforest community of Santa Rosa, Napo province. Specialists were mobilized to the region to contain the oil slick that contaminated local waterways. But Marlon Santi, leader of Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), said, "There are 47 communities affected, the situation is grave."

The French company slated for a massive contract in Peru's Amazon region is having its income from oil revenues frozen in neighboring Ecuador. The announcement was made by PetroEcuador after the company, Perenco, missed its deadline to pay off $350 million in back taxes to Ecuador's government. According to reports, PetroEcuador said it would freeze the income from 720,000 barrels of oil produced by Perenco.

A tribe of 300 hunter-gatherer nomads is fleeing from bulldozers in the Brazilian Amazon as their last forest is rapidly destroyed, Survival International reports. Around sixty members of the Awá tribe have no contact with outsiders. Survival International has launched an urgent campaign for the protection of the Awá, with one group of illegal loggers said to be only three kilometers form their community.

President Rafael Correa was condemned by Ecuador's national indigenous peoples' organization CONAIE over his policy towards uncontacted Amazon tribes Jan. 29. "Correa's regime is promoting oil production on land inhabited by uncontacted tribes," read the statement from CONAIE. The statement was made in an open letter to the World Social Forum being held in the Amazon town of Belem, Brazil, which President Correa is attending. It comes after the recent announcement by government ministers they intend to protect Ecuador's uncontacted peoples from illegal loggers.

Illegal gold-miners shot dead a Yekuana indigenous leader and injured his son Jan. 21 in the Brazilian state of Roraima. Yekuana man Vicente Carton and his son Ronildo had refused to take the miners up the dangerous rapids of the Uraricoera River into the Yanomami indigenous reserve. The miners shot them, and Vicente died immediately while Ronildo escaped by jumping into the river. He hid in the forest and eventually made his way back to his village.

Indigenous people from across Latin America led more than 1,000 protesters, gathered in Belem, Brazil, for the World Social Forum, in formation of a human banner Jan. 27. Around the giant outline of a warrior taking aim with a bow and arrow, indigenous leaders and activists spelled out the message "SALVE A AMAZONIA," or "save the Amazon" in Portuguese. Some indigenous participants were themselves armed with bows and arrows.

An Anglo-French oil company hoping to drill for oil on uncontacted tribes' land in the Peruvian Amazon may be forced to abandon the project after the government threatened to withdraw investment in it. The project depends on the construction of a billion-dollar pipeline to transport the oil from the remote Amazon to the Peruvian coast. Perupetro, the state oil company, is currently "reevaluating" investing in the project after the recent fall in global oil prices. "Everything seems to indicate that [the pipeline] has to be reevaluated," said Peru's Energy Minister Pedro Sanchez at a news conference.