“You can’t stop important, high-quality journalistic work.” Alessandra Sampaio, widow of British journalist Dom Phillips, says it was the main driver that led her to unite forces with his friends to finish his book after he was killed in 2022. “As soon as the tragedy happened, it became very clear to me and also to [Dom’s] journalist friends, from whom I had a lot of support, that it was important to finish the book,” Sampaio tells Mongabay in a video interview. On June 5, 2022, Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were brutally killed in the Javari Valley region, in the Brazilian Amazon. The British journalist was investigating illegal fishing in the region, aimed to be the second-last trip for his book, according to Sampaio. Near the Brazil-Colombia-Peru triple border, the Javari Valley region is a hotspot for organized crime, including drug traffickers, illegal loggers and poachers. The region is home to the second-largest Indigenous territory in Brazil — 8.5 million hectares (21 million acres), an area twice the size of Switzerland — and an estimated 17 isolated Indigenous groups live there, with little to no contact with the rest of the world. The cover of the U.S. edition of Dom Phillips’ book, which will be launched in the U.S. on June 9. Three years later, How to save the Amazon: A journalist’s fatal quest for answers, by Phillips with contributors, will be launched beginning May 31 in the United Kingdom, the United States and Brazil, accompanied by dedicated events…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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