Amazon Destruction: Why is the rainforest being destroyed in Brazil?

Between May 2000 and August 2005, Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometers of forest(an area larger than Greece)and since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. Why is Brazil losing so much forest? What can be done to slow deforestation?

Why is the Brazilian Amazon being Destroyed?

In many tropical countries, the majority of deforestation results from the actions of poor subsistence cultivators. However, in Brazil only about one-third of recent deforestation can be linked to "shifted" cultivators. A large portion of deforestation in Brazil can be attributed to land clearing for pastureland by commercial and speculative interests, misguided government policies, inappropriate World Bank projects, and commercial exploitation of forest resources. For effective action it is imperative that these issues be addressed. Focusing solely on the promotion of sustainable use by local people would neglect the most important forces behind deforestation in Brazil.

Brazilian deforestation is strongly correlated to the economic health of the country: the decline in deforestation from 1988-1991 nicely matched the economic slowdown during the same period, while the rocketing rate of deforestation from 1993-1998 paralleled Brazil's period of rapid economic growth. During lean times, ranchers and developers do not have the cash to rapidly expand their pasturelands and operations, while the government lacks funds to sponsor highways and colonization programs and grant tax breaks and subsidies to forest exploiters.

A relatively small percentage of large landowners clear vast sections of the Amazon for cattle pastureland. Large tracts of forest are cleared and sometimes planted with African savanna grasses for cattle feeding. In many cases, especially during periods of high inflation, land is simply cleared for investment purposes. When pastureland prices exceed forest land prices (a condition made possible by tax incentives that favor pastureland over natural forest), forest clearing is a good hedge against inflation.

Such favorable taxation policies, combined with government subsidized agriculture and colonization programs, encourage the destruction of the Amazon. The practice of low taxes on income derived from agriculture and tax rates that favor pasture over forest overvalues agriculture and pastureland and makes it profitable to convert natural forest for these purposes when it normally would not be so.

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The Painting is by Henri Rousseau

German scientists discover 120 million year-old ant

BERLIN (Reuters) - German biologists have discovered a new species of ant they believe is the oldest on the planet, dating back around 120 million years.

Researchers from Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum found the 3-millimetre-long (0.118 inch) insect in the Amazon rainforest in 2007, and hope it will shed light on the early evolution of ants.

"It's by far the most spectacular find of my 26-year career," said museum biologist Manfred Verhaagh on Tuesday.

Scientists from Karlsruhe originally found an unidentified species of ant of a similar type in the Brazilian rainforest in 2003. However, due to an accident in the laboratory, the insect dried up, making further research impossible, Verhaagh said.

Last year a separate team from the museum's research body was in the forest investigating fungus when they stumbled upon the tiny insect, and named it "Martialis heureka".

Resembling a miniature wasp, the insect is like no other ant, and probably dates back 120 million years, making it the oldest still inhabiting the earth, Verhaagh said. The scientists used DNA samples from its front leg to establish its likely age.

The last discovery of a new ant species was in 1923, he added.

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The painting is by Laura Tasheiko

Loggers still a threat to Amazon Indians

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Isolated native Indians in the Amazon forest of Brazil and Peru remain threatened by advancing loggers despite growing international attention to their plight, a senior Brazilian official said on Thursday.

"Pressure from Peruvian loggers continues, it's a concern," Marcio Meira, head of the government's Indian affairs agency, Funai, told the foreign press association in Brasilia.

Brazil's Acre state along the border with Peru is one of the world's last refuges for such groups, but increasing activity by wildcat miners and loggers puts them at risk.

Dramatic pictures of pigment-covered Indians from the region threatening the photographer's aircraft with bows and arrows were carried in May by media worldwide.

The Peruvian ambassador to Brazil subsequently told Meira his government was concerned about the issue and preparing measures, without detailing what these were.

Brazil has 26 confirmed native Indian tribes that live with little or no contact with the outside world. There are unconfirmed reports of an additional 35 such groups.

Many of them live in the forest like their forefathers did centuries ago, hunting and gathering.

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The painting is by Laura Tasheiko

Buffalo Zoo opening new $16M rain forest exhibit

BUFFALO, N.Y. - The Buffalo Zoo is unveiling its new $16 million South American rain forest exhibit, which features a two-story waterfall, giant anteaters, vampire bats, howler monkeys, an anaconda and other rare animals.

Zoo officials hope the exhibit, opening to the public Wednesday, will boost the zoo's winter attendance.

The exhibit is designed after Venezuela's 3,000-foot-high Angel Falls, which zoo President Donna Fernandes visited in 1982. She suggested replicating the world's tallest waterfall when planning for the new exhibit began four years ago.

Visitors to the rain forest exhibit will traverse indoor walkways that will take them through mist from the waterfall, with viewing from a second-story platform and other overlooks.

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The painting is by Laura Tasheiko

20% of the Brazilian Amazon's tree species to go extinct

A new study estimates the number of trees that will go extinct in the Brazilian Amazon due to habitat loss.

The research, published in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggests that under optimistic scenarios, 20 percent of tree species will disappear. In a bleaker scenario, 33 percent will go extinct. If this proves true, Amazonian trees may be in as much danger as coral reefs and amphibians, both of which face extinction crises.

Although, no one knows the actual number of tree species in the Brazilian Amazon, the authors, led by Stephen P. Hubbell of the University of California at Los Angeles, used various mathematical theories to estimate the number of species at just over 11,200, including 5,308 rare species with less than 10,000 surviving individuals. Predicted extinction rates for these rare species are high, ranging from 37-50 percent.

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Oil development may destroy richest part of the Amazon rainforest

688,000 square kilometers (170 million acres) of the western Amazon is under concession for oil and gas development, according to a new study published in the August 13 edition of the open-access journal PLoS ONE. The results suggest the region, which is considered by scientists to be the most biodiverse on the planet and is home to some of the world's last uncontacted indigenous groups, is at great risk of environmental degradation.

Tracking some 180 oil and gas projects operated across Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and western Brazil, researchers from Save America's Forests, Land Is Life, and Duke University generated a comprehensive map of hydrocarbon concessions in the region. The assessment reveals that oil and gas blocks are concentrated in the most intact part of the Amazon rainforest, including national parks — both Yasuní National Park in Ecuador and Madidi National Park in Bolivia are under concession.

"We found that the oil and gas blocks overlap perfectly with the most biodiverse part of the Amazon for birds, mammals, and amphibians," said study co-author Dr. Clinton Jenkins of Duke University. "The threat to amphibians is of particular concern because they are already the most threatened group of vertebrates worldwide."

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Brazil Wants $21 Billion to Protect the Amazon Rainforest

On Friday, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva headlined an event to officially launch a new international fund that will raise money to protect the Amazon Rainforest. “We are conscious of what the Amazon represents for the world… It’s better for the country’s image to do things right, so we can walk in international forums with our heads high,” Lula pontificated.

It is hoped that the fund will raise up to 21 billion dollars over the next 13 years from nations around the world. Norway has already chipped in, pledging 100 million dollars to kick things off. Brazil has made it clear though that donations are only being accepted with a condition of no strings being attached. In other words, countries that donate money will have no say over how the money is used.

This stringent policy has its roots in resentment. Some Brazilians feel that they have been unfairly criticized by other countries for the deforestation of the Amazon. They claim that these nations often sit back and provide little in the means of help, or have their own environmental peccadilloes that make these slights toward Brazil’s conservation efforts hypocritical. Brazil’s Minister for Strategic Affairs, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, voiced this sentiment at the press conference: “The fund is a vehicle by which foreign governments can help support our initiatives without exerting any influence over our national policy. We are not going to trade sovereignty for money.”

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"Heal Your Body, Heal the Planet" Tree Planting Program

SCOTTSDALE, AZ--(Marketwire - May 2, 2008) - In the Southwest United States alone, nearly two million acres of forest are now gone, destroyed by recent catastrophic wildfires. An estimated 1.2 million hectares of Brazilian Amazon rainforest have been destroyed by illegal soya bean farming. And throughout Honduras, Panama, Belize, and Nicaragua, slash-and-burn farming is the leading cause of rainforest destruction in that region. This ongoing destruction upsets many land and water-based ecosystems, which in turn will take many, many years to replace. Plus, the loss of millions of trees increases the negative effects of carbon dioxide (CO2). Trees act as a carbon sink by removing the carbon from carbon dioxide and storing it as cellulose in the trunk while releasing the oxygen back into the air. One healthy tree stores around 13 pounds of carbon each year, or some 2.6 tons per acre every year.

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Amazon alliance to help forest communities

New forest people's alliance formed as Amazon deforestation continues to rage, Tim Hirsch reports from São Paulo, Brazil
Brazil producing condoms from the rainforest
Brazil town at centre of logging crackdown
Brazil to act over acceleration in deforestation

A new global alliance of indigenous and traditional forest communities has been set up, aimed at ensuring they are included in financial incentives to slow deforestation and fight climate change.

The initiative was announced at a conference in Manaus in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, as new satellite data showed no apparent respite in rainforest destruction in February, despite a major government crackdown.

The meeting of forest peoples from 13 countries, mostly in South and Central America, was a response to discussions under the UN Climate Change Convention to set up a system rewarding countries that succeed in reducing their rate of deforestation.

Scientists estimate that the loss of the carbon stored in forests accounts for at least 20 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

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Amazon’s ‘Forest Peoples’ Seek a Role in Striking Global Climate Agreements

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: April 6, 2008

MANAUS, Brazil — Some wore traditional headdresses, and some traveled by riverboat or canoe. But the dozens of “forest peoples” who descended on this capital of Amazonas State last week had a common goal of becoming bigger players in global climate talks.

A conference here that ended last Friday drew leaders of hundreds of indigenous groups in 11 Latin American countries and observers from Indonesia and Congo, the largest gathering of its kind, organizers said. They came to build a consensus for a plan in which wealthier countries would compensate developing countries for conserving tropical forests like the Amazon.

Such an international carbon-trading plan has been gaining momentum and was a central topic last December at a climate conference in Bali, Indonesia. Scientists generally agree that tropical deforestation accounts for 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“There is a real sense that this potentially represents a huge opportunity for forest peoples to influence climate change negotiations and create larger-scale incentives to stop deforestation and improve their living conditions,” said Stephan Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, who attended the discussions here.

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Climbing the Amazonian trees

An intrepid tree lover leads adventure travelers high above the Brazilian rain forest.

AMAZONAS, BRAZIL (FORTUNE Small Business) -- Suspended 100 feet above the rain forest floor, I finally understand why I traveled thousands of miles to the Amazon to climb trees.

Through the lattice of leaves I glimpse a loftier, greener world where only the cries of howler monkeys and macaws pierce the silence. As I inch higher, the canopy grows closer: Its branches stretch over the forest like an awning, shielding the earth from the equatorial sun. I ease back into my climbing saddle to rest, stretch my fingers, and watch the sunset as I sway beneath the rope that supports me. Then I make a mistake.

I look down.

When I see my feet dangling more than ten stories above the ground, I panic and freeze. Recreational tree climbing has an impeccable safety record: Tree Climbers International (TCI), the sport's flagship organization and first for-profit school, has facilitated lessons for more than 100,000 climbers since 1983 without any fatal accidents. This statistic escapes me, however, as I stare down at giant fronds that look like the tops of tiny pineapples. As I white-knuckle the rope connected to my saddle, my instructor, Tim Kovar, swings closer to me. "How's it going?" he asks.

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The SeedsDream project

The SeedsDream project was initiated in 2005 by indigenous leaders deeply concerned about both the cultural and ecological impacts of deforestation. In the past, small clearings would always grow back. Now trees once common had not been seen in over 20 years, and a generation was growing up without the forest. Without the plants traditionally used for food, medicine and ritual, centuries of cultural heritage was disappearing.

Our goal is to reverse this trend of regional extinctions by creating refuge forests and developing networks of seed exchange among indigenous communities. We are working to unite traditional and scientific perspectives on tropical rainforests and their essential value. Reforestation is bringing excitement and hope, precisely because it connects a deep cultural heritage with tangible environmental action.

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