A swath of Amazon rain forest the size of England was placed under government protection on Monday in a region infamous for violent conflicts among loggers, ranchers and environmentalists.
The protected territory totals 150,000km2 of the Guyana Shield region, an area of Amazon forest stretching across international borders that contains more than 25 percent of the world's remaining humid tropical forests and the largest remaining unpolluted fresh water reserves in the American tropics.
The protected areas will link to existing reserves to form a vast preservation corridor eventually stretching into Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. While the entire Guyana Shield corridor is not yet protected, portions of it in each country are now covered.
PHOTO: AP
The Washington-based environmental group Conservation International put up US$1 million to facilitate the expansion, which preserves much of the jungle's largely untouched north.
Still, it is far from clear how much the new reserves will do to stall Amazon destruction, since most of the deforestation is taking place along the rain forest's southern border.
"If any tropical rain forest on Earth remains intact a century from now, it will be this portion of northern Amazonia," Conservation International president Russell Mittermeier said. "The region has more undisturbed rain forest than anywhere else."
The Amazon region covers 60 percent of Brazil and 20 percent of its forest -- 4.1 million km2 -- already has been destroyed by development, logging and farming.
Over the past four years, an area larger than South Carolina has been cut down.
The protections, announced on Monday by the Para state government, are all the more surprising coming out of a state twice the size of France long known for ruthlessly cutting down the rain forest and where ranchers often gun down those who try to stop it. Last year's murder of US nun Dorothy Stang is only the most notorious killing of forest defenders in the largely lawless jungle frontier.
Stang, 73, of Dayton, Ohio was shot dead in a dispute over a piece of land she wanted to preserve and local ranchers wanted cut down to raise cattle.
The new protected areas will help break the power of ranchers who often claim ownership of areas the size of small European countries and rule them as their own personal fiefdoms, said Para state environment secretary Raul Porto. These ranches are so huge in part so that landowners can appear to limit clear-cutting to 20 percent of their Amazon property, as required by law.
The law is routinely ignored, but has still contributed to vast land-grabs, Porto said. Now, with the state managing timber concessions in most of these forests, "sustainable" logging will be encouraged.
"Now there's no need for the plantation-type estate, which was our biggest problem," Porto said in a televised interview.
Two of the new protected areas, covering 56,932km2, would place the land completely off limits to the general public and only be accessible to researchers.
Together, these two areas are believed to contain up to 54.1 percent of all bird, animal and plant species found in the Amazon, Conservation International said.
They also are home to several endangered animal species, including the northern bearded saki monkey, jaguars, giant anteaters, the giant armadillo and the ariranha, or giant Amazon otter.
The remaining areas have been declared sustainable use protected areas, allowing local communities to manage the natural resources and permitting limited logging under strict management.
The creation of the new reserves places about 55.4 percent of Para state either under some form of government protection or on an Indian reservation.
"Together, the protected areas and indigenous lands of northern Para form one of the greatest biodiversity corridors of tropical forests in the planet," Conservation International said.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
RSS