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Brazil's new environmental minister blames ranchers for surge in Amazon deforestation mongabay.com June 3, 2008
Minc, a founder of Brazil's Green Party, attributed accelerating forest loss to clearing by ranchers and farmers who are taking advantage of high prices for grains and beef. The Amazon is an increasingly important source of agricultural production in Brazil. Brazilian satellite data released Monday showed 1,123 square kilometers of forest were lost in April, almost eight times more the 145 square miles cleared in March. But officials cautioned that the jump may be overestimated due to limited visibility from cloud cover in March.
Minc said that forest loss will likely worsen in the upcoming June through September dry season when the bulk of deforestation in the Amazon takes place. Landowners typically burn large tracts of land to establish cattle pasture and clearing for soy farms. "It will be very difficult for deforestation this year to stay below last year's," Minc told reporters in Brasilia. "The worst months are still to come."
The rise in deforestation was not unexpected: unusually large amounts of burning have been detected by satellites in recent months and commodity prices — increasingly correlated with forest clearing in the Amazon — have remained near record levels. The increase in deforestation in the second half of 2007 and first quarter of 2008, follows a three-year decline in forest clearing.
Brazil houses more than 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest tropical forest. Over the past 30 years nearly one-fifth of the forest area have been cleared, largely for agriculture and cattle pasture. Scientists estimate the forest may be home to one quarter of the world's land-based plant and animal species as well as the largest population of indigenous people still living in traditional ways. Additional details on the April deforestation figures Data released by INPE, Brazil's space agency, showed that 70 percent of deforestation during April 2008 occurred in Mato Grosso, an important soy- and beef-producing state in the so-called "Arc of Deforestation" where most forest clearing is occurring in the Amazon. The state of Roraima had the second largest area of forest loss during the month. The new figures comes from the DETER (for Real-time Detection of Deforestation) system for monitoring deforestation. DETER detects an area of deforestation of greater than 25 hectares. Brazil's other satellite system is known as PRODES (for Program to Calculate Deforestation in the Amazon). It can detect areas of deforestation of more than 6.5 hectares.
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