{"id":38,"date":"2026-05-22T17:49:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T17:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/?p=38"},"modified":"2026-05-22T17:49:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T17:49:58","slug":"fortress-yellowstone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"Fortress Yellowstone"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<audio>\n\n  Your browser does not support the audio element.\n<\/audio>\n<\/div>\n<div><p>Listen to Joseph Bullington read this article<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>SANTAR\u00c9M, BRAZIL <\/strong>\u2014 The taxi judders uphill into a\u00a0forest brimming with life. Palm fronds droop over the road like huge, oily hands, and green birds flap between trees. And then, abruptly, the forest ends, and we emerge onto a\u00a0denuded plain where the sun beats down on road and car and red\u00a0dust.<\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/?p=28\">Exclusive: FBI Files Counter Government Argument in Texas \u201cAntifa\u201d Trial<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I am here to see firsthand how the ultra-rich are remapping the Earth\u2019s remaining wild places, deciding what is sacrificed and what is conserved and for\u00a0whom.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For me, this road into the Brazilian Amazon began a\u00a0few weeks prior and nearly <span>5<\/span>,<span>000<\/span>\u00a0miles away, on a\u00a0different dirt road through a\u00a0sprawling Montana\u00a0ranch.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I had followed that county road up through creek bottoms onto a\u00a0rolling plateau of rangeland, where the southern front of the Crazy Mountains filled the windshield. I\u00a0stopped the truck and stepped out into the\u00a0quiet.<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Half an hour had passed since I\u2019d heard an engine besides my own or seen another human being. Other life-forms predominated. Whitetail deer down by the creek. Up here, knots of pronghorn antelope. A\u00a0pair of kestrels hunted methodically across the prairie. In the distance, forested foothills hid untold creatures: elk, black bear, moose in the low country and mountain goats in the high, grouse, woodpeckers, lynx, fox and, maybe, in the alpine reaches, even a\u00a0wolverine or\u00a0two.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Or maybe a\u00a0grizzly bear. One had been sighted not too long ago near the Crazies, which lie on the northern edge of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, home to one of the few remnant populations that have found refuge from all-out extermination in the lower <span>48<\/span> states. Even the faintest possibility of encountering one of these rare and powerful beasts was enough to imbue the mountains ahead with spine-tingling\u00a0mystery.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>But the road ended there for me, according to two bright \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>No Trespassing\u201d signs that blocked the way. The wild terrain that beckoned from beyond them was for the exclusive enjoyment of the ranch\u2019s owners and their chosen\u00a0guests.<\/p>\n<p>Wild Eagle Mountain is one of a\u00a0growing number of billionaire-owned ranches in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which encompasses some <span>12<\/span> million to <span>22<\/span> million acres (depending on how you measure) and supports the largest concentration of wildlife in the contiguous United States. As such places grow increasingly rare\u2014a <span>2021<\/span> study estimated that only <span>3<\/span>% of the Earth\u2019s land area retains all of the species that lived there <span>500<\/span>\u00a0years ago\u2009\u2014\u2009proximity to Yellowstone has become an increasingly valuable commodity. In recent years, the ultra-rich have been buying up slopeside mansions, frontage on trout rivers and great swaths of land here in one of the last nearly intact ecosystems left on Earth. And it\u2019s not only in Montana: This influx of wealth has made Teton County, Wyo.\u2009\u2014\u2009on the other side of this ecosystem\u2009\u2014\u2009the richest and most unequal county in the United\u00a0States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>To understand the scale of this transformation, I\u00a0analyzed land ownership data for Park and Sweet Grass counties, an area at the heart of Montana\u2019s Greater Yellowstone country. In these counties\u2009\u2014\u2009which contain Paradise Valley, parts of three mountain ranges and a\u00a0main entrance to Yellowstone National Park\u2009\u2014\u2009I found the landscape dominated by out-of-state wealth: seven of the counties\u2019 <span>10<\/span> largest landowners are ultra-rich investors and industrialists who own their vast tracts through a\u00a0maze of LLCs registered in Montana, Texas, New Jersey, Washington and California. An eighth property tracks to a\u00a0Boston-based financial services firm with \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>over <span>50<\/span>\u00a0years of experience serving the needs of high net worth individuals and families,\u201d according to its website. But I\u00a0could not determine who the property\u2019s actual owner is. (The firm, Paul | McCoy Family Office Services, did not respond to phone calls or emails requesting\u00a0comment.)\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Some of these ultra-rich ranch owners celebrate the natural beauty of their land and are ardent conservationists when it comes to the Yellowstone ecosystem. In digging into their business dealings, however, I\u00a0found that most of these landowners accumulated their wealth through industries that help drive the destruction of nature elsewhere. Their ranks include private equity investors, oil and gas billionaires and real estate\u00a0developers.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Take, for example, Russell Gordy, the largest landowner in the two-county area. When Gordy consolidated several smaller landholdings into his <span>44<\/span>,<span>000<\/span>-acre Rock Creek Ranch, he swore off the idea of ever subdividing or developing it. \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>They don\u2019t make land like that anymore,\u201d he told the <em>Plainview Herald <\/em>in <span>2002<\/span>. Later, when he sued his neighbors to stop them from building a\u00a0wind farm, Gordy railed in a\u00a0court affidavit against \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>industrializing the Yellowstone\u00a0Valley.\u201d\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>But Gordy made his billions industrializing other landscapes\u2009\u2014\u2009drilling hundreds of wells for coalbed methane in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico and Colorado, fracking shale gas in Colorado\u2019s Thompson Divide, collecting royalties from a\u00a0mineral lease for a\u00a0massive coal mine in southern\u00a0Illinois.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Arthur Blank, the area\u2019s second-largest landowner, also couched his two-decade ranch-buying spree in the language of environmentalism, and he placed some of his land in conservation easements to protect its habitat in perpetuity\u2009\u2014\u2009a move that won him applause from local\u00a0conservationists.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>But Blank made his billions as the co-founder of Home Depot, the largest distributor of lumber in the United States and a\u00a0company that environmental campaigners have targeted over the decades for its role in old-growth logging and forest degradation\u00a0worldwide.<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-30\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a90b7986cdbf7555e197ffb41c758df5-1024x683.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a90b7986cdbf7555e197ffb41c758df5-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a90b7986cdbf7555e197ffb41c758df5-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a90b7986cdbf7555e197ffb41c758df5-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a90b7986cdbf7555e197ffb41c758df5.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<div>The Yellowstone River runs through Paradise Valley, Mont., where an onslaught of wealth is driving out the non-rich.  <span>WILLIAM CAMPBELL\/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Then there is the MacMillan family, whose Wild Eagle Mountain Ranch is the third-largest landholding in this part of Montana. When they joined Gordy in suing to stop a\u00a0planned wind farm on a\u00a0neighboring ranch, they argued it would \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>despoil one of the most spectacularly beautiful areas in the\u00a0world.\u201d\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>The family\u2019s wealth, however, comes from their ownership stake in Cargill Inc., the food and agribusiness giant that dominates global supply chains for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans, and whose profits have come at great cost to people and ecosystems around the world. In Brazil, the group Mighty Earth ranks Cargill in the top three companies \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>worst for deforestation,\u201d linking it to the destruction of more than <span>500<\/span> square miles of tropical forest in just two years, between <span>2022<\/span> and\u00a0<span>2024<\/span>.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>After seeing what I\u00a0could of the MacMillans\u2019 Yellowstone ranch\u2009\u2014\u2009after watching pronghorn antelope graze across its sagebrush prairies backed by forested mountains, after sampling the chokecherries growing along one of its creeks\u2009\u2014\u2009I wanted to see the land where Cargill makes its money. So I\u00a0bought a\u00a0ticket to the Brazilian Amazon and, a\u00a0few weeks later, found myself in the back seat of a\u00a0hired car traveling toward A\u00e7aizal, a\u00a0remote Indigenous\u00a0village.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>A\u00e7aizal\u2009\u2014\u2009pronounced ah-sah-ee-ZAL\u2009\u2014\u2009sits on the Planalto Santareno, what was once a\u00a0largely unbroken plateau of tropical rainforest perched above the city of Santar\u00e9m and the confluence of two rivers so vast they almost defy the category\u2009\u2014\u2009the Amazon and the Tapaj\u00f3s. But when we climbed onto the planalto, I\u00a0could barely see any forest at\u00a0all.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Outside the car windows, fields of barren red earth unfurled for miles beneath the glare of the Amazonian sun. These manufactured deserts ended abruptly against dark, squared off walls of the forest from which they were carved. In the growing season, these fields, which dominate the planalto, produce soybeans and corn in rotation, largely animal feed for export to Europe and Asia. When I\u00a0visited, in October <span>2025<\/span>, the only signs of life were some roadside weeds, the broken gray stalks of harvested corn and the occasional lone figure of a\u00a0Brazil nut tree, illegal to cut under Brazilian law and a\u00a0reminder of the kind of forest and foodways that lived here before the onslaught of monocrop\u00a0agriculture.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>What connects these two landscapes\u2009\u2014\u2009the Yellowstone ranch with the Planalto Santareno\u2009\u2014\u2009is the fact that Cargill is driving the obliteration of the planalto\u2019s mosaic of tropical forest and small farms to make way for industrial soy plantations. Put simply, the Planalto Santareno is one of the places where the Cargill-MacMillan family extracts its momentous wealth. Wild Eagle Mountain Ranch is one of the places where it stores and enjoys\u00a0it.<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>CUTTHROATS<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Whitney MacMillan, great-grandson of Cargill Inc. founder William Wallace Cargill, bought his first Montana ranch a\u00a0few years after he took over as chairman and CEO of the family business, in\u00a0<span>1977<\/span>.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>During his tenure, MacMillan oversaw the company\u2019s dramatic global growth, expanding its operations from <span>31<\/span> countries to <span>53<\/span>. In Brazil, Cargill got into the sugar and cacao businesses and built infrastructure for processing and shipping soybeans, including a\u00a0facility in the central state of Mato Grosso in <span>1986<\/span>. This positioned the company well for what turned out to be a\u00a0major boom. New seed varieties and soil amendments\u2009\u2014\u2009particularly lime, to neutralize the acidic soils of Mato Grosso\u2019s tropical savannas and forests\u2009\u2014\u2009opened the door for industrial soy production in a\u00a0region where it had been thought impossible. Between <span>1980<\/span> and <span>1996<\/span> (the year after MacMillan retired as CEO), the area of Mato Grosso under soy cultivation grew by nearly <span>3<\/span>,<span>000<\/span>%, boosted by tropical growing seasons and ample\u00a0rain.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Cargill\u2019s global expansion paid off: Under MacMillan\u2019s watch, the company\u2019s revenue more than tripled in <span>10<\/span>\u00a0years, and it grew into the largest grain company in the world. It paid off for MacMillan, too. After a\u00a0few years at the head of the company, he and his wife, Elizabeth, had the means to fulfill his childhood dream of owning a\u00a0ranch, and they didn\u2019t go small. In <span>1979<\/span>, they purchased <span>20<\/span>,<span>000<\/span>\u00a0acres in the foothills of Montana\u2019s Crazy Mountains and named it Wild Eagle Mountain\u00a0Ranch.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>After MacMillan retired in <span>1995<\/span>, Cargill continued to expand in Brazil and around the world. Profits continued to flow to the family, who remained majority owners\u2009\u2014\u2009making Cargill the largest private company in the world and filling the ranks of the Cargill-MacMillans with more billionaires than any family on Earth. In the <span>1990<\/span>s, MacMillan became co-owner of another ranch, this time on Montana\u2019s northern prairie. His cousin, Austen S. Cargill II, bought a\u00a0<span>9<\/span>,<span>300<\/span>-acre spread in Paradise Valley in\u00a0<span>2001<\/span>.<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Neither Cargill Inc. nor the MacMillan family (via representatives of the LLC that owns Wild Eagle Mountain Ranch) responded to interview requests or detailed questions from <em>In These\u00a0Times.<\/em><br\/><\/p>\n<p>Today, the agribusiness giant shows no sign of slowing its accumulation: In fiscal year <span>2025<\/span>, it paid out a\u00a0company-record $<span>1<\/span>.<span>5<\/span> billion in profits to its owners, in part because of increased soy and corn exports from\u00a0Brazil.<\/p>\n<p>For the MacMillans, Wild Eagle Mountain offered a\u00a0retreat from the fast-paced world of global business. Up until only a\u00a0few years before he died\u2009\u2014\u2009at age <span>90<\/span>\u00a0in <span>2020<\/span>, leaving the LLC that owns the ranch in Elizabeth\u2019s name\u2009\u2014\u2009MacMillan enjoyed fly fishing in the ranch\u2019s creeks, particularly for native Yellowstone cutthroat trout. That\u2019s according to journalist Amy Gamerman, whose <span>2025<\/span> book, <em>The Crazies<\/em>, chronicles the successful effort by Wild Eagle Mountain Ranch, Gordy and other wealthy landowners to stop the proposed Crazy Mountain Wind\u00a0project.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span>Although he didn\u2019t have much patience for greenies, as he called environmentalists,\u201d Gamerman writes, \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>MacMillan really did care about the Yellowstone cutthroat trout.\u201d In <span>2007<\/span>, he met with a\u00a0biologist from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, according to agency documents, to discuss \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>opportunities to promote Yellowstone cutthroat trout\u201d on his ranch, where \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Mr. MacMillan has a\u00a0long history of improving habitat\u00a0quality.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span>Whitney MacMillan was a\u00a0conservative in the literal sense,\u201d writes Gamerman. \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>He wanted to keep the place the way he found it, and he had found it with those Yellowstone cutthroat\u00a0trout.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>GROVES OF A\u00c7A\u00cd<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>When he looks back, <em>Cacique <\/em>(chief) Manoel Munduruk\u00fa sees <span>2007<\/span>\u2009\u2014\u2009the same year Whitney MacMillan was talking creek conservation with a\u00a0state fisheries biologist\u2009\u2014\u2009as a\u00a0turning point for the Munduruk\u00fa people, as industrial soy plantations closed in on their\u00a0territory.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>We are sitting by the <em>Igarap\u00e9 A\u00e7aizal<\/em>, a\u00a0creek that runs through the village of A\u00e7aizal in what is left of the Munduruk\u00fa territory of the Planalto Santareno. (Like many Indigenous people in the Amazon, Manoel uses the name of his tribe as a\u00a0surname.) The Munduruk\u00fa used to fish and do laundry and swim here, Manoel tells me, until deforestation for soy plantations dewatered it. Runoff from the soy and corn fields has poisoned what water is left, he says. Most of the fish are\u00a0gone.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Nearby, Manoel introduces me to Edno Munduruk\u00fa, an elder who has lived in the territory all his life. (Both men speak to me in Portuguese, through a\u00a0translator.) When he was a\u00a0kid, Edno tells me, it was all forest. He gestures to encompass the world in every direction from where he sits in a\u00a0hammock outside of his cinderblock\u00a0house.<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span><em>S\u00f3 mato<\/em>,\u201d he says. \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Only\u00a0forest.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Edno describes a\u00a0typical day in the life of the Munduruk\u00fa when he was young: \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>If you wanted fish for lunch, you went to the river. If you wanted meat for dinner, you went to the\u00a0forest.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>The forest where they hunted also offered fruits and nuts in abundance, including <em>a\u00e7a\u00ed, <\/em>the purple fruit of the <em>a\u00e7a\u00ed <\/em>palm. In those days, Edno explains, the Munduruk\u00fa moved seasonally as different fruits ripened, living for a\u00a0time in each of four villages\u2009\u2014\u2009including here in A\u00e7aizal, which translates to \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Grove of\u00a0A\u00e7a\u00ed.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f427908aa8265326130ecbbd16bc82f6-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f427908aa8265326130ecbbd16bc82f6-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f427908aa8265326130ecbbd16bc82f6-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f427908aa8265326130ecbbd16bc82f6-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f427908aa8265326130ecbbd16bc82f6.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<div>Manoel Munduruk\u00fa sits in the forest by the Igarap\u00e9 A\u00e7aizal, a stream in the tribe&#8217;s territory that has been dewatered by deforestation and polluted by runoff from the soy fields.  <span>Photo by Joseph Bullington<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>And, of course, there was <em>mandioca<\/em>. Called by many different names in the different lands where it has become a\u00a0staple food crop\u2009\u2014\u2009yuca, manioc, cassava\u2009\u2014\u2009this plant with starchy, yam-shaped roots is indigenous to the southern Amazon, where it was domesticated more than <span>10<\/span>,<span>000<\/span>\u00a0years ago. Across the yard from where Edno and I\u00a0are talking sits a\u00a0heavily used mandioca mill and griddle. Similar griddles are among the oldest artifacts archaeologists have unearthed in the\u00a0Amazon.<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span>That\u2019s why they thought the Indigenous were lazy,\u201d says Edno, chuckling. \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Because we didn\u2019t have to work for other people to make a\u00a0living.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now, instead of forests full of fruits and animals and mandioca clearings, industrial soy plantations press in on A\u00e7aizal like a\u00a0closing fist. There is no escape from the onslaught of monoculture. Manoel shows me where rows of broken cornstalks run right up against the edge of the community\u2019s soccer field, which the soy farmers also want to plow. The soybeans and corn, like those in the United States, are genetically engineered to withstand the herbicides and pesticides the farmers dump on them to beat back weeds and pests, but the chemicals drift, says Manoel, making it impossible to grow fruits and vegetables and mandioca nearby. The streams run low and full of\u00a0poison.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Now, for dinner, we eat store-bought fish with store-bought\u00a0rice.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What unleashed this cataclysm on the Munduruk\u00fa was a\u00a0quiet tick in the global economic system, perhaps a\u00a0figure on a\u00a0balance sheet, that convinced the leaders of Cargill they could increase their profits by building a\u00a0port in the city of Santar\u00e9m to export soybeans and corn to feed factory-raised pigs and chickens and feedlot cattle in Europe and\u00a0Asia.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Once Cargill opened the port, in <span>2003<\/span>, planting soy suddenly became profitable in the Amazon forests of the northern state of Par\u00e1, where the crop had been virtually unheard of. Industrial soy plantations exploded across Amazonia as farmers rushed to buy up land. Some cleared rainforest for soy, while others converted small farms or cattle pasture, pushing forest-clearing cattle ranches farther into the forest frontiers of Mato Grosso and Par\u00e1. The year Cargill\u2019s port opened, Brazil\u2019s Amazon biome saw more than <span>11<\/span>,<span>400<\/span> square miles of native vegetation cleared\u2009\u2014\u2009the highest level of deforestation recorded since <span>1987<\/span>, when MapBiomas, a\u00a0multi-organizational mapping initiative, began tracking\u00a0it.<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-32\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0b90746f7eacf13b934fb76e83ab1364-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0b90746f7eacf13b934fb76e83ab1364-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0b90746f7eacf13b934fb76e83ab1364-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0b90746f7eacf13b934fb76e83ab1364-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0b90746f7eacf13b934fb76e83ab1364.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<div>Completed in 2003, the agribusiness giant Cargill Inc.\u2019s grain export terminal in Santar\u00e9m, Brazil, helped drive an expansion of regional soy farming and a new level of rainforest destruction.  <span>Photo by Joseph Bullington<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>On the Planalto Santareno, the process played out in \nmicrocosm. In <span>2000<\/span>, less than a\u00a0quarter mile of soy was growing in the \nmunicipalities that make up the planalto. By <span>2024<\/span>, that number surged to\n almost <span>400<\/span> square miles, according to MapBiomas. In that same time, the planalto\u2019s forest cover shrank by more than <span>660<\/span> square\u00a0miles.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>After a\u00a0Greenpeace-led campaign, Cargill and other major \nsoy traders agreed to stop purchasing soy from land in the Amazon \ndeforested after <span>2008<\/span>. But the Soy Moratorium agreement,\n as it came to be known, did not cover Brazil\u2019s vast tropical savanna, \nknown as the Cerrado, where deforestation surged. Nor did it entirely \nprotect the Amazon rainforest, where monitoring groups have documented \nextensive violations. But the Soy Moratorium did drastically slow the \nrate of direct, soy-driven deforestation in the Amazon biome, says Lisa \nRausch, a\u00a0scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who \nresearches deforestation in Latin\u00a0America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>In January, however, an industry group that represents Cargill and other major soy traders announced it is pulling out of the Soy\u00a0Moratorium.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Without the agreement, says Rausch, \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>There will for sure be more deforestation associated with\u00a0soy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the planalto, the expansion of industrial soy has not only stripped the land of its forest but of its traditional human inhabitants, who find themselves increasingly unable to farm as agrochemicals poison their crops and waterways. This includes Indigenous groups like the Munduruk\u00fa, but also <em>quilombola <\/em>communities (descendants of Africans who escaped slavery) and non-Indigenous peasant\u00a0farmers.<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span>Once their streams are polluted, they cannot live in the community anymore,\u201d explains Maria Ivete Bastos dos Santos, president of the Union of Workers and Rural Workers of Santar\u00e9m, through a\u00a0translator. \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>You can\u2019t raise chickens, go fishing, do laundry. \u2026 They used to grow rice and beans. Now, they have to go to the market to buy rice. \u2026 The most important crop is mandioca.When the time comes you can\u2019t grow mandioca, the community cannot\u00a0survive.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Many communities have not survived. A\u00a0recent study of farming on the planalto found the arrival of the Cargill port and industrial soy has led to the concentration of land in the hands of big, well-capitalized soy farmers, many of whom arrived from the south of Brazil to take advantage of the cheap land, government subsidies for export crops, and financing and shipping opportunities offered by Cargill. Small farmers, the report found, were pressed to sell their land for cheap or expelled from it, leading to \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>the disappearance of entire\u00a0communities.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Cargill Inc. did not respond to detailed questions about allegations that Cargill has driven destruction and displacement on the Planalto Santareno and in the wider region. The company\u2019s Brazilian website says its Santar\u00e9m facility contributes to \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Brazilian agribusiness and the sustainable development\u201d of the region. A\u00a0<span>2018<\/span> Cargill press release, celebrating the anniversary of its arrival in Santar\u00e9m, points to the port\u2019s creation of <span>400<\/span> direct and <span>270<\/span> indirect\u00a0jobs.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>But what Cargill hails as \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>development\u201d has brought only harm for locals, Bastos dos Santos says. People who didn\u2019t need jobs to make a\u00a0living, because they had the land, now have neither land nor\u00a0jobs.<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f81b3214084274f9912ec82bbe06b436-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f81b3214084274f9912ec82bbe06b436-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f81b3214084274f9912ec82bbe06b436-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f81b3214084274f9912ec82bbe06b436-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f81b3214084274f9912ec82bbe06b436.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<div>Manoel Munduruk\u00fa points to industrial corn and soy fields pressing up against a soccer field in the Indigenous Munduruk\u00fa community of A\u00e7aizal, Brazil.  <span>Photo by Joseph Bullington<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Many of the displaced people, she says, migrate to the \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>the peripheries of the city\u201d of Santar\u00e9m. Because there are no farming jobs, she says, some turn to crime and\u00a0prostitution.<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span>This, as well,\u201d she says, \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>is one of the impacts of the\u00a0soybeans.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>As for the Munduruk\u00fa, some have already been displaced. Others remain determined to hold onto the territory. It is a\u00a0constant fight, says Josenildo Munduruk\u00fa, a\u00a0cacique and a\u00a0math teacher at A\u00e7aizal\u2019s Indigenous\u00a0school.<br\/><\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/?p=23\">After Decades of Quiet Rumbling, an Epidemic Is Erupting Among California Stoneworkers<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The soy farmers, Josenildo tells me through the translator, covet what\u2019s left of the Munduruk\u00fa territory. They constantly expand their fields, little by little, and only through constant vigilance and resistance can the Munduruk\u00fa hold back the tide of soy. This leads to conflict and threats of violence. He speaks of drones used to monitor the Munduruk\u00fa leadership and pickup trucks full of armed men who follow them down the dirt roads around\u00a0A\u00e7aizal.<\/p>\n<p>Josenildo concedes Cargill neither owns the farms nor participates in the efforts to push out the Munduruk\u00fa, but \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Cargill is the head chief of the destruction,\u201d he says. \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Cargill is responsible for the death of the people in Munduruk\u00fa territory, for the death of the territory\u00a0itself.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>FORTRESS YELLOWSTONE<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>As communities in the Brazilian Amazon have been uprooted in the name of development, a\u00a0parallel process of upheaval and displacement has unfolded in another of the world\u2019s remaining wild\u00a0places.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>The MacMillans\u2019 <span>1979<\/span> purchase of Wild Eagle Mountain Ranch placed them early among what became a\u00a0torrent of ultra-rich buyers hungry to own a\u00a0piece of Yellowstone. This rapid influx of wealth has transformed parts of the rural West that were, not so long ago, frontier hinterlands characterized by ranching, railroading and natural resource extraction into centers of extreme opulence characterized by luxury mansions, mountain side golf courses and so-called natural\u00a0amenities.<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span>What\u2019s happening now in this part of the world is wealthy people are trying to buy up large swaths of land and turn them into exclusive resorts,\u201d says Mike Clark, a\u00a0renowned social and environmental activist. He calls the phenomenon \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Fortress\u00a0Yellowstone.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>In <span>2001<\/span>, Clark ended his first of two stints as director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a\u00a0prominent conservation group, with a\u00a0farewell speech warning against the burgeoning myth of\u201ca noble, almost heroic, Fortress Yellowstone, where those who can afford to live and play here can escape the pressures and problems of modern\u00a0life.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>The allure of escape is easy to understand: Escape from cities where the nearest hope of seeing a\u00a0wild deer lies in an hours-long drive down traffic-clogged freeways. Escape from the monocrop corn empire of Midwestern industrial agriculture with its nitrate-poisoned rivers and cancer clusters. Escape from municipal water supplies abounding with forever chemicals. Escape to a\u00a0place with clean air and clean water and healthy wildlife populations, where you and your family\u2009\u2014\u2009and your assets, of course\u2009\u2014\u2009just might be able to weather the ravages of unabated climate\u00a0change.<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span>The idea of Fortress Yellowstone is, for the wealthy, very appealing,\u201d Clark tells\u00a0me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Once I\u2019d dug the owners\u2019 names out from behind the LLCs, it\n was startling to see how the area\u2019s prominent land features have been \nencompassed by the ranches of the very rich and sometimes famous. Leave \nYellowstone National Park and drive north into Paradise Valley, for \nexample, and you pass through the empire of ranches owned by billionaire\n Arthur Blank, cofounder of Home Depot. Around the town of Pray, the \nlandscape west of the road becomes the sprawling domain of oil and gas \nbillionaire Trevor\u00a0Rees-Jones.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>In the Crazies, if you head east from Wild Eagle Mountain, \nyou pass a\u00a0ranch owned by David Leuschen, a\u00a0billionaire private equity \nmagnate whose portfolio has included coal-fired power\u00a0plants\n and oil companies, and whose <span>160<\/span>,<span>000<\/span>\u00a0acres of ranchland sprawl across \nseveral Montana counties and into Wyoming. Keep going and you encounter \nthe sixth-largest spread in the two-county area, owned in part by an \nentity called Crazy Not To LLC and associated with Tim Conver, former \nCEO of arms manufacturer\u00a0AeroVironment.<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of the Crazies, past Russell Gordy\u2019s \nextensive Rock Creek Ranch, lies the Crazy Mountain Ranch, acquired in \n<span>2021<\/span> by an investment fund called CrossHarbor Capital Partners. The \nMontana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation recently sued\n the ranch for illegally diverting water from Rock Creek to irrigate a \n<span>300<\/span>-acre golf course created to take \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>full advantage of the exceptional \nmountain views, aspen groves and wide open spaces that surround the\u00a0Ranch.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>CrossHarbor also owns the hyper-exclusive resort called the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Mont., which counts among its\u00a0members\n Bill Gates, Tom Brady and Justin Timberlake, as well as right-wing \nfinancier Bill Ackman and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who hosted a \nfundraiser there for Donald Trump\u2019s <span>2024<\/span> presidential campaign. Tickets \nreportedly started at $<span>100<\/span>,<span>000<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><em>In These Times <\/em>reached out to Gordy, Leuschen, \nRees-Jones and Conver about their property holdings but did not receive a\n response. A\u00a0representative for CrossHarbor did not respond on the \nrecord to emailed\u00a0questions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-34\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/164b468d82c5489ec7934d617c58849a-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/164b468d82c5489ec7934d617c58849a-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/164b468d82c5489ec7934d617c58849a-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/164b468d82c5489ec7934d617c58849a-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/164b468d82c5489ec7934d617c58849a.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<div>The Crazy Mountain Ranch in Montana, purchased by an investment fund in 2021, is being sued for illegally diverting water from Rock Creek to irrigate its sprawling golf course.  <span>WILLIAM CAMPBELL\/GETTY IMAGES<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>An escape to Yellowstone is not for everyone, of course. Increasingly, it\u2019s not even for the people who already live here. As I\u2019ve reported previously, the wealth pouring into Yellowstone is driving a\u00a0wave of rapid gentrification that\u2019s ripping people from the land they\u00a0love.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>As housing prices surge, some longtime locals see their property taxes soaring beyond their fixed incomes, while others watch their hopes of ever owning a\u00a0place in their hometown recede into impossibility. Many have left. Others stay and live in their cars. The rate of homelessness has skyrocketed.<\/p>\n<p>Once, even the lowest-wage workers here could maintain deep relationships with the land through hunting, fishing, hiking and picnicking. Now, the workers who power the area\u2019s tourism and leisure economy find themselves straddling the widening gap between rising rents and stagnant wages, working longer hours and commuting longer distances from far-flung apartments, trailer parks and campsites. The hustle to survive here dominates their waking hours and leaves little time to get out into the mountains. Even when they get a\u00a0break, the proliferating scourge of \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>No Trespassing\u201d signs blocks ever more favorite fishing holes, hunting areas and hiking trails, as selling exclusive access has become a\u00a0profitable market.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>The billionaire fascination with playing cowboy also has consequences for actual cowboys. That\u2019s according to Keegan Nashan, <span>32<\/span>, who knows the wealthy takeover from two sides. For one, she\u2019s a\u00a0firebrand organizer who runs the Instagram account \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>F*ck the Yellowstone Club,\u201d with more than <span>2<\/span>,<span>000<\/span> followers. (For comparison, about <span>10<\/span>,<span>000<\/span> people live in the county.) She also has to make a\u00a0living, so she has worked as a\u00a0caterer, which has taken her behind the scenes of many of these trophy ranches and the Yellowstone Club\u00a0itself.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>To illustrate her point, Nashan tells me about a\u00a0young guy she knows who grew up in an ag family and who raises \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>roughstock\u201d\u2009\u2014\u2009that is, the broncs other people (other than me) try to stay atop at rodeos. With rangeland prices driven through the roof by the luxury real estate rush, beginning ranchers and farmers like her friend can\u2019t even dream of having a\u00a0place of their\u00a0own.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span>The possibility of that being a\u00a0lifestyle is dead,\u201d Nashan says. \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>That is the consequence of the billionaires purchasing all this\u00a0land.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>WALLS OF WEALTH<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>The term Fortress Yellowstone nods to the concept of \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>fortress conservation,\u201d a\u00a0model that, in the United States, has spawned everything from the National Wildlife Refuge system to the Wilderness Act. Yellowstone National Park itself serves as one of fortress conservation\u2019s best and earliest blueprints. The model aims to protect biodiversity by limiting human presence in an ecosystem because, in this view, humans are fundamentally separate from and destructive to nature. In Yellowstone, fortress conservation has meant the exclusion of the market hunters who decimated the buffalo elsewhere but also the forced removal of the Shoshone, Bannock and other Indigenous\u00a0peoples.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>These days, fortress conservation can conveniently mesh with the desire of the wealthy for privacy, exclusivity and profitable ways to invest. As Justin Farrell points out about Teton County, Wyo., in his <span>2020<\/span> book, <em>Billionaire Wilderness<\/em>, when the ultra-rich put their land in conservation easements to prevent development, they not only conserve ecological value but ensure they\u2019ll never have any neighbors. They also contribute to the scarcity of buildable land and, consequently, increase the value of their own\u00a0houses.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>A similar process has played out across Yellowstone at landscape scale, as some local conservation groups have effectively allied with ultra-rich landowners to defend the\u00a0fortress.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In <span>2019<\/span>, when Arthur Blank purchased his third of four Paradise Valley ranches and put it in a\u00a0conservation easement, he vowed to preserve the lands \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>in their original, intact state for the sake of beauty and wildlife.\u201d Blank has also contributed more than a\u00a0million dollars to local conservation groups which have organized campaigns to defeat a\u00a0pair of proposed gold mines and other industrial projects that could mar Paradise Valley, where the onslaught of wealth is driving the non-rich\u00a0out.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>The benefit of all of this conservation, in other words, is enjoyed by an increasingly elite\u00a0few.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Blank declined to be interviewed for this story, but a\u00a0representative for his holding company, AMB West, emailed a\u00a0statement that reads, in part, \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>Mr. Blank\u2019s long-standing commitment to environmental and conservation-related initiatives is well documented. To date, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation has given over $<span>137<\/span> million in total grants across the state of Montana, including support for rural and indigenous communities outside of the Paradise Valley\u00a0area.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>The spokesperson did not respond to questions about the environmental legacy of Home Depot and noted that Blank is no longer in a\u00a0leadership role at the company. A\u00a0spokesperson for Home Depot pointed <em>In These Times <\/em>to public overviews of its sustainable forestry\u00a0efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the destruction continues beyond the bounds of Fortress Yellowstone. In fact, the value of conservation zones like Yellowstone grows in a\u00a0sort of perverse correlation with the expansion of their opposite, the areas of the planet that the powerful deem not worth conserving\u2009\u2014\u2009the resource extraction zones they feed into the furnace of the global economy to generate growth, \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>development\u201d and, of course,\u00a0profit.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-35\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/590110ba4b6af17433f17f205f949abd-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/590110ba4b6af17433f17f205f949abd-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/590110ba4b6af17433f17f205f949abd-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/590110ba4b6af17433f17f205f949abd-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/590110ba4b6af17433f17f205f949abd.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<div>Edno Munduruk\u00fa walks in the forest near his home.  <span>Photo by Joseph Bullington<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Yellowstone, for example, would be less special if its famous mammals\u2009\u2014\u2009the bison and elk, grizzly bears and wolves\u2009\u2014\u2009still roamed most of the continent, as they used to. These creatures live in Yellowstone not because the snowy, jaw-like ranges of the Absarokas and Gallatins and Crazies offer particularly rich habitat. All these mammal species, in fact, belong more to the grasslands than the mountains, but they were exterminated from their homes on the prairie, much of which has since been turned into, yes, soybeans and corn and other industrial row\u00a0crops.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Yellowstone\u2019s specialness, in short, has less to do with its intrinsic qualities than with the utter destruction of nature almost everywhere else, from Iowa to the Planalto Santareno. The result of this paradigm is a\u00a0landscape of stark and mounting inequality\u2009\u2014\u2009environmental conservation for some, environmental desolation for\u00a0others.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>With its expanses of conserved land, healthy wildlife populations and clean rivers, Yellowstone is becoming the exclusive domain of rich people like the Cargill-MacMillans, Blanks and Gordys, which makes it increasingly out of reach for the rest of us\u2009\u2014\u2009an ecological fortress guarded by walls of wealth ripped from the earth in distant sacrifice\u00a0zones.<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>BEM VIVER<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>The logic of this paradigm can feel overwhelming and inevitable: We can conserve some areas in their \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>original, intact state\u201d (in the words of Arthur Blank) for the sake of wild animals and plants, but we must sacrifice other landscapes to the growing\u00a0economy.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>For a\u00a0long time, Western scientists and observers aiming to protect the Amazon portrayed it as a\u00a0nearly empty landscape, where few people lived or ever had. The kind of intensive agriculture necessary to support large-scale human occupation, they argued, would destroy the forest\u2019s fragile ecosystem. This logic, which sees humans as inevitable destroyers of the natural environment, is familiar\u2009\u2014\u2009the logic of fortress conservation and sacrifice\u00a0zones.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>More recent research, however, has uncovered evidence that, long before Europeans arrived, the Amazon was populated, sometimes densely, by people who practiced large-scale agriculture, just of a\u00a0different kind. The anthropologist and ecological historian William Bal\u00e9e argues that much of the Amazon rainforest\u2009\u2014\u2009at least <span>11<\/span>.<span>8<\/span>%, he estimated in a\u00a0<span>1989<\/span> paper\u2009\u2014\u2009is not wild or original but the result of a\u00a0sort of extensive forest farming by Indigenous peoples, who built desirable trees and plants into their landscape over\u00a0time.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Strikingly, these Indigenous agroforestry practices \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>may have enhanced, rather than diminished, regional biodiversity,\u201d Bal\u00e9e wrote in his <span>2013<\/span> book, <em>Cultural Forests of the\u00a0Amazon.<\/em><br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-36\" height=\"748\" src=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0a88e6579bcac5603510f2fbdd621a6e-1024x748.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0a88e6579bcac5603510f2fbdd621a6e-1024x748.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0a88e6579bcac5603510f2fbdd621a6e-300x219.jpg 300w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0a88e6579bcac5603510f2fbdd621a6e-768x561.jpg 768w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0a88e6579bcac5603510f2fbdd621a6e.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<div>A man paddles a canoe up a small stream in the Floresta Nacional do Tapaj\u00f3s.  <span>Photo by Joseph Bullington<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Indigenous Amazonians were, in short, solving the problem of how to make a\u00a0living from the forest without degrading\u00a0it.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Those are tricks we could stand to learn, for the sake of not only life in the Amazon but life on Earth. The clearing of one of the world\u2019s last great forests\u2009\u2014\u2009which has shrunk by roughly <span>20<\/span>% since <span>1970<\/span>\u2009\u2014\u2009also means the destruction of one of the world\u2019s great carbon sinks and the release of its prodigious stores of locked-up greenhouse gases. At <span>25<\/span>% destruction, some scientists warn, the Amazon risks collapse into\u00a0savanna.<\/p>\n<p>When I\u00a0called Bal\u00e9e at his office at Tulane University in New Orleans, he said the Planalto Santareno had been extensively shaped by the Munduruk\u00fa\u2019s Indigenous predecessors, the Tapaj\u00f3 culture, who covered large areas with rich garden soils and changed the composition of the forest\u00a0itself.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>To better understand this landscape, I\u00a0follow Edno Munduruk\u00fa on a\u00a0walk through what\u2019s left of the forest at A\u00e7aizal. He calls out the names and uses of the plants along the way: Here\u2019s the <em>inaj\u00e1 <\/em>palm, which has edible fruits, and there\u2019s the <em>or\u00fama <\/em>vine, whose fiber can be woven into baskets. As he goes, Edno dismisses encroaching plants from the trail with a\u00a0stroke of his\u00a0machete.<\/p>\n<p>We reach an opening, a\u00a0<em>ro\u00e7a <\/em>where the sun pours in to feed a\u00a0crop of mandioca. The Munduruk\u00fa farmers are waiting for a\u00a0different stretch of forest to reach a\u00a0certain age, Edno explains, to begin clearing it for a\u00a0new crop of mandioca and return this ro\u00e7a to forest\u2009\u2014\u2009a constant and long-term cycle of forest maintenance that ensures a\u00a0mosaic of mature forest interspersed with mandioca clearings and regenerating\u00a0forest.<br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>I had come to bear witness to soy-driven destruction, not \nlook for solutions. So I\u00a0was surprised to find the Munduruk\u00fa and many \nother communities not only resisting the monocrop expansion but \narticulating an alternative to its entire logic\u2009\u2014\u2009a way of inhabiting the \nland based not on conservation or sacrifice zones, but on living well in\n ecologically healthy\u00a0territories.<\/p>\n<p>According to Jo\u00e3o \nPaulo de Cortes, a\u00a0geographer at the Federal University of Western Par\u00e1 \nin Santar\u00e9m, a\u00a0growing movement of communities across the region rejects\n the dominant developmentalist doctrine and the unquestioned good of \neconomic growth. Instead, he says, these communities pursue a\u00a0different \nmeasure of good, a\u00a0different framework called <em>Bem Viver<\/em>, which translates literally to something like \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>living\u00a0well.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>The concept was systematized by the Ecuadoran intellectual \nAlberto Acosta, but it is based, in particular, in the cosmologies of \nIndigenous peoples of the Andes Mountains and Amazon forests. In a\u00a0<span>2018<\/span> article,\n Acosta and Mateo Mart\u00ednez Abarca write that this Indigenous perspective\n \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>assumes a\u00a0reduction in consumerism \u2026 while being based on \never-increasing self-sufficiency at the community level.\u201d It recognizes \nthat \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>humans are part of Nature and cannot dominate, commodify, \nprivatize and destroy\u00a0it.\u201d\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>For many traditional communities like the Munduruk\u00fa, Bem \nViver means fighting for sovereignty, for official demarcation of their \nterritory\u2009\u2014\u2009boundaries where they can defend their food system and way of \nlife against land-grabbers, soy farms, loggers and\u00a0miners.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-37\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/8064d47882b62d51eb67132b97468908-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/8064d47882b62d51eb67132b97468908-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/8064d47882b62d51eb67132b97468908-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/8064d47882b62d51eb67132b97468908-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/8064d47882b62d51eb67132b97468908.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<div>Edno Munduruk\u00fa examines a crop of mandioca in a forest clearing near his home.  <span>Photo by Joseph Bullington<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Winning demarcation\u2009\u2014\u2009a real possibility\u2009\u2014\u2009would mean the Munduruk\u00fa territory would abruptly include a\u00a0lot of land now covered in soy plantations. Kept in soy, the fields could generate money for the tribe. So, while visiting A\u00e7aizal, I\u00a0ask Cacique Manoel what the Munduruk\u00fa would do with the land if they recover\u00a0it.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>His answer embodies the essence of Bem Viver: \u200b<span>\u201c<\/span>The only thought we have is to get back the land and [restore] the forest. The whole existence of the Munduruk\u00fa people depends on the forest. Without the forest, there is no Munduruk\u00fa\u00a0life.\u201d<br\/><\/p>\n<p>The afternoon is getting late when Edno and I\u00a0stop at the base of a\u00a0massive Brazil nut tree whose trunk disappears into the ceiling of vines and leaves far above our heads. Scattered about the base are the coconut-shaped husks that guard its meaty seeds. Nearby, Edno digs his machete into the ground to reveal <em>terra preta<\/em>\u2014the dark, fertile soil that, in the Amazon, evinces long-term human habitation of a\u00a0site. People have been producing food from this landscape for a\u00a0very long time, and yet we are surrounded still by\u00a0biodiversity.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>Beyond this patch for forest, meanwhile, looms a\u00a0vast and expanding monocrop plain from which all of this\u2009\u2014\u2009the vines and animals and insects, the ancient trees and mandioca clearings and people who tend the trails between them\u2009\u2014\u2009has been obliterated. Far away, at the other end of the dividend slips, lies Wild Eagle Mountain Ranch, where, maybe, some of the money extracted from those fields has been spent to restore the creeks where succeeding generations of Cargill-MacMillans might learn to fly\u00a0fish.<br\/><\/p>\n<p>But here, in the ragged remnants of the Munduruk\u00fa forest, was a\u00a0holdout against all of that: Edno was showing me through a\u00a0living alternative to both monocrop soy and luxury ranches, to both sacrifice zones and conservation\u00a0fortresses.\u00a0<br\/><\/p>\n<p>He stood, wiped the dirt off his machete, and led on into the forest, toward\u00a0home.\u00a0<br\/><\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/?p=17\">ICE-Cold Cash: Members of Congress Took More than $1.7 Million from ICE Contractors<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ultra-rich are fortifying themselves inside one of America\u2019s last intact ecosystems\u2014with money plundered from ecological sacrifice zones around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","category-feature","category-rural-america"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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