"Brazil court halts plan to blast 35-km river rock formation hosting endangered species", 10 July 2025

...A federal court in Brazil has blocked the start of planned explosions along a 35-kilometer (22-mile) rock formation called Pedral do Lourenço in the Tocantins River, pausing a major infrastructure project until a judge can inspect the site.

The decision suspends the federal government’s attempt to clear the way for large cargo ships to travel year-round through the Tocantins-Araguaia waterway, which runs from the Cerrado savanna in central Brazil, an agricultural stronghold, north to the Amazonian state of Pará...

Pedral do Lourenço currently blocks the passage of large ships during the dry season, June to December, when water levels are lower than the rest of the year. The federal government says opening up the waterway would allow the equivalent of around 500,000 trucks to traverse the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers all year round, potentially reducing logistics costs by up to 30% as the river provides a more direct route to ports in the Amazon.

But prosecutors say the environmental license granted by IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, in May 2025 was approved without properly consulting the potentially impacted communities.

Federal prosecutor Rafael Martins da Silva previously told Mongabay contributor André Schröder that the agency left fishing-related problems as an afterthought, adding: “This permit should not have been granted.”

An assessment of the impact that the explosions and subsequent ship traffic may have on fishing, the main source of food and income for the communities in the region, wasn’t carried out, prosecutors added...