In recent years the journalist Dom Phillips, who was killed aged 57 during a reporting trip to the Amazon, had become convinced that Indigenous communities played an essential role in protecting the rainforest and stabilising the climate.
It was for this reason that he accompanied Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian expert on uncontacted tribes, into the Javari valley, to observe how territory is demarcated and protected against predatory intrusions by illegal loggers, miners, fishermen and drug traffickers – threats that had grown more intense during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. The two men were ambushed on their boat journey home and executed in the forest, prompting demands for greater protection of environmental defenders and the journalists who report on them.
