Satellite imagery guides patrols into newly detected forest clearings

Deep in Suriname’s Amazon rainforest, Saamaka communities around Tutubuka — officially known as Nieuw Aurora and situated along the Upper Suriname River — are combining rules passed down through generations with satellite images, GPS maps and field patrols to document incursions into forests they consider protected. The work is intended to preserve an existing system of community governance while building evidence for government recognition of collective land rights.

Navaldo Vola, 31, hacked through thick vegetation with a machete while leading a group of Saamaka men up a forested mountain in sweltering heat and swarms of horseflies. Halfway up Ebbatop mountain, the group found a massive abandoned excavator fitted with an attachment designed to tear down trees.

The group had found a makeshift camp at the foot of the mountain the previous day. Packets of masala powder and bottles of soy sauce remained in the cooking area, and the men believed the camp had been used by Chinese loggers. They spent the night there, stringing hammocks from its wooden structures. Beyond the excavator and near the summit, they found another camp with pieces of plastic tarp, aluminum mugs and other items left behind.

“We knew that some people come here, but we didn’t know that they are doing logging,” Vola said. “This part is supposed to be untouched.”

The fieldwork is part of a broader effort to document both incursions and a system of community forest governance. The Saamaka are one of Suriname’s six communities descended from Africans who escaped slavery on Dutch plantations and established autonomous settlements deep in the forest during the 17th and 18th centuries. After decades of fighting Dutch colonial forces, they secured a peace agreement in 1762 recognizing their freedom and autonomy. About 60,000 Saamaka people live in Suriname, according to the Association of Saamaka Communities, commonly called VSG.

For generations, Saamaka clans have governed forest use through traditional agreements, setting aside land for farming while protecting other areas for spiritual, cultural or historical importance. Communities are now mapping those areas to document their forest-management system. They named the initiative Apaki in November 2025 after a container made from dried calabash fruit traditionally used to preserve food, a symbol of their effort to safeguard the forest for future generations.

Mapping the forests can document incursions and strengthen the Saamaka’s case for protection, but it does not give them legal title. In 2007, the Saamaka won a landmark case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights after challenging logging and mining concessions granted in their traditional territory. The court ruled that Suriname had violated their property rights and ordered the government to demarcate their territory and grant collective title. Nearly two decades later, Hugo Jabini, managing director of VSG and a longtime land-rights advocate, said key parts of the legally binding ruling remain unimplemented, leaving communities without legal authority to control what happens on their land.

In a pledge announced last year, Suriname said it would protect 90% of its tropical forests and strengthen conservation laws, potentially including legal recognition of ancestral lands belonging to Indigenous and tribal communities. The small South American country, between Guyana, French Guiana and Brazil, has a population of about 650,000 and is about 93% forested. Its forests span parts of the Amazon rainforest and the Guiana Shield and absorb more greenhouse gases than the country emits.

The Associated Press reported that Suriname’s tribal territories have lost nearly 154,000 hectares, or 380,500 acres, of forest since 2001 — roughly twice the size of New York City. Nationwide, Global Nature Watch estimated that about 200,000 hectares, or 494,000 acres, of humid primary forest were lost between 2002 and 2025.

Monitoring methods and Palmera-road access

Sara Ramírez, a Colombian researcher working with VSG, said satellite analysis has detected changes in areas so remote that community members initially struggled to believe what they were seeing. Higher-resolution imagery later confirmed signs of activity in one such area. The information can guide helicopter flyovers or patrols, allowing communities to investigate suspicious clearings or roads first identified from above.

“They have the information, and then they have the resources to go and check what is happening,” Ramírez said.

Ramírez said the technology does not replace traditional knowledge but helps the Saamaka document a system outsiders have often failed to recognize. After elders saw maps and satellite images showing new logging and mining, some concluded that they needed to formally document Apaki so outsiders could better understand how their communities had managed the forest.

Road construction has made some of those remote areas more accessible. Jabini said roads are increasingly opening traditionally protected areas to outsiders. The Palmera road began expanding in 2022 despite Saamaka opposition and now stretches roughly 253 kilometers, or 157 miles, according to community mapping. The road has opened access to one of the most important Apaki areas.

Jabini, who won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2009, grew up without a road linking his community to Paramaribo. When he first traveled to the capital to continue his education, part of the journey took four days by boat. From the late 1980s, roads began reaching deeper into Saamaka territory, turning journeys of days into hours while opening once-inaccessible forests to outsiders.

“Within a couple of months,” Jabini said, the road had pushed deep into the forest. “That’s how fast things go.”

John Goedschalk, an adviser to Suriname’s president on climate and biodiversity finance, said the government recognizes the Saamaka’s longstanding role in protecting the country’s forests and is open to working directly with their traditional authorities.

“Their mapping and satellite monitoring can help us enforce where the State alone cannot reach,” Goedschalk said.

Goedschalk said talks with Saamaka leaders on forest protection were taking place in October and that the government was updating its legal framework to allow community-protected areas to be formally established. Jabini said he was unaware of any plans for such talks.

The Associated Press joined a helicopter flyover and reported that much of the logging and gold mining observed on Saamaka territory was illegal, and none of it had been approved by Saamaka authorities. From the air, the damage appeared far less extensive than in Colombia, Peru and Brazil, which have been heavily scarred by years of illegal mining and logging. But new roads and small clearings pushing into largely intact forest offered signs of how that logging and mining footprint was quickly expanding in Suriname.

Natasha Donu, 49, secretary of VSG, said she was shocked by the scale of the new destruction.

“I’m very worried, because I didn’t know that many places were still being destroyed like that,” Donu said after seeing the latest findings. “There are some places we weren’t expecting to see deforestation.”

Jabini said communities are training young people to monitor the forest and collect data that can support complaints, negotiations and legal action.

Mining divisions, threats and offshore oil

Goedschalk said Suriname’s president has imposed a moratorium on new gold-mining concessions and extensions to ease pressure on the country’s interior. He also said cooperation with communities such as the Saamaka would be essential to maintaining the country’s 90% forest-cover goal.

There are divisions within Saamaka communities as well. Gold mining provides income for some residents, and Jabini acknowledged that people who depend on the industry may support its expansion even as others seek to keep it out of protected forests.

Jabini said he received a death threat earlier this year after Saamaka communities challenged a gold-mining concession near Paba Creek, a major Apaki protected area. He reported the threat to police and temporarily changed his movements. Earlier threats drove him to live in the Netherlands from 2016 to 2022. Since returning, he said, he has taken greater security precautions and avoids publicizing his whereabouts.

Suriname is also preparing for an offshore oil boom, raising questions about how new wealth and development could affect the country’s forested interior.

For Saamaka leaders, the maps offer evidence of what their communities have protected for generations. But lasting protection, they say, depends on the government recognizing their territorial rights and stopping unwanted incursions.

For Vola, who helped lead the forest patrol, the stakes extend far beyond his own lifetime.

“This is our wealth and this is what we are fighting for,” Vola said. “Maybe a thousand generations from now, this must still be here like how our ancestors left it for us.”

Source note: The Associated Press said its climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations and that AP is solely responsible for all content.