An estimated 2700 square miles of forest was cleared between august and december of 2007 by Brazil's cattle and soy industries. AP reports a 30% increase in these numbers over the same period for 2006.
SAO PAULO, Brazil - The rate of Amazon deforestation rose sharply during the last five months of 2007 as land was cleared for soy and cattle, prompting a top-level emergency meeting Thursday by government officials to deal with the problem.
from AP.
Last year Brazil cited a drop in Amazon deforestation, but the new statistics indicate that this trend has been reversed. Most of last year's destruction was concentrated in the three Amazon regions of Mato Grosso, Para and Rondonia. Mato Grosso is the center of Brazil's soy industry, and is second only to the United States for soy production. Jungle is typically cleared in the Amazon to provide pasture for cattle, later soy farmers move in and cultivate their crops. Brazil also has a booming beef export industry, and cattle ranchers have been expanding their operations in the Amazon.
more below.
There is a complex battle going on in Brazil for the ecology of this southern region pitting pro-development forces against environmentalists and local indigenous peoples.
In a controversial plan, Brazil’s government is preparing to let private companies embark on a $417 million paving project to turn BR163 into a modern two-lane toll highway stretching 1,100 miles, nearly the distance between Philadelphia and Miami. That would link Brazil’s most important soy-growing region with a deep-water Amazon River port.
from AP.
Truck traffic will increase dramatically as the country opens up a new export corridor for Brazil’s most important crop. Trips that now take weeks during the rainy season will be cut to a matter of hours. The pavement is bound to boost migration and is expected to lead to even more deforestation, prompting warnings from environmentalists of possible ecological disaster. Once the paving is completed, Brazil, which has become an undisputed agricultural superpower over the last decade, will be able to greatly reduce the price of sending its produce abroad.
“The Trans-Amazon is last-century stuff,” said Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere studies at Johns Hopkins University’s school of international studies in Washington, D.C. “The north-south route is where you get the soybeans, and it is a logical route for inland migration as well,” from Brazil’s populous south to the relatively uninhabited Amazon.
from AP.
The February 2005 slaying of American nun Dorothy Stang, who spent 23 years protecting the rain forest and peasants, was blamed on a rancher coveting land Stang was trying to protect. The government froze development in 32,000 square miles along BR163 in response, but environmentalists believe the ban will be lifted within a year.
“Economics are determining the fate of the Amazon,” said Paulo Adario, who heads Greenpeace’s Amazon project. “The paving is inevitable, and at the end of the day, the discussion is centering on what we are willing to lose.”
from AP.
Add to this the Eldorado do Juma gold rush and the future of the world's largest rain forest seems bleak at best.
Drawn by a Brazilian math teacher's Web site that describes miners scooping up thousands of dollars in gold, between 3,000 and 10,000 people have poured in since December, cutting down huge trees, diverting streams and digging ever-deeper wildcat mines, in an area that only months ago was pristine rain forest.
from AP.
NOTE- This is a different gold rush from Serra Pelada, the Brazilian mountain that became a gargantuan hole in the jungle floor after a gold rush in the early 1980s. This earlier ecological disaster was immortalized in Sebastiao Salgado's photos of what looked like a hellish human anthill.
News on the ecological front seems to just get worse and worse with every passing headline...
Visit Rainforest Action Network to see how you can help preserve the Amazon. Thanks to internationaljock for the link.