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The Amazon is Under Attack: Nearly 300 Environmental Defenders Murdered — And the Fight for Justice Continues
Venezuela has crossed a devastating threshold: its last surviving glacier — the Humboldt Glacier (also known as La Corona) in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida — has shrunk so much that scientists no longer consider it a glacier.
With that reclassification, Venezuela becomes likely the first Andean country in modern history to lose all of its glaciers.
According to award winning Columbia lawyer, Yessika Johanna Hoyos Morales,
consolidated Amazon-focused data and regional monitoring groups, at least 296 environmental and land defenders have been murdered in the Amazon since 2014. But this crisis is part of a much larger global pattern.
In 2024 alone
146 land and environmental defenders were murdered or disappeared worldwide, said Morales.
The Colombian lawyer warns the real number is almost certainly higher—many attacks go unreported, especially in remote forest regions, and numerous cases remain impossible to verify due to threats, lack of state response, and obstruction of investigations.
RFM Meets With Colombian Human Rights Lawyer Yessika Johanna Hoyos Morales
RFM met with Yessika Johanna Hoyos Morales, one of Colombia’s leading human rights lawyers, who has spent years fighting for families of murdered social and environmental leaders.
Yessika delivered a stark warning:
impunity is what keeps these killings going.
“No environmental defender should die for protecting life. Justice must be delivered not delayed. Every day without accountability invites another attack.”
– Yessika Johanna Hoyos Morales
She explained that while Colombia leads the world in defender assassinations, most cases are never fully investigated, leaving families without truth and communities without protection. Illegal groups and extractive networks continue to operate freely, emboldened by state inaction.
RFM stands with Yessika and with every frontline community calling for justice.
Why Their Protection Is Climate Action
As the Amazon edges toward irreversible tipping points, those who defend it are being silenced through violence. Their murders open the door for:
• Faster deforestation
• Illegal activities expansion
• Invasion of Indigenous territories
• Biodiversity loss
• Worsening climate instability
Protecting environmental defenders is not an isolated human rights issue—
it is core climate policy.
RFM will continue documenting these realities with rigor and respect. Our mission is to amplify the voices of those risking their lives for the Amazon and to confront the systems that threaten them.
We will keep meeting with local families, leaders, lawyers, and frontline organizations demanding protection, accountability and an end to impunity. Their courage fuels global climate justice.
