Environmentalists praise government decision to protect 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres) of Amazon forest
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
August 9, 2001
By MICHAEL ASTOR
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Environmental groups on Thursday praised a government decision to protect 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres) of Amazon rainforest acquired through the seizure of land that had been obtained through fraud.
But they urged the international community and the government to help ensure the protections go beyond mere declarations.
''Greenpeace calls on the international community to provide technical and financial support to transform these 'paper parks' created by decree, into effectively protected areas,'' said Paulo Adario, coordinator of Greenpeace's Amazon program.
Adario said the government has frequently declared areas national parks and then done little or nothing to protect them. The Amazonia National Park, created in 1974, was never demarcated and it recently lost some 700 hectares (1,729 acres) to illegal logging.
Even parks that have been demarcated and provided with infrastructure are often seriously understaffed.
The protected areas, announced Wednesday by Environment Minister Jose Sarney Filho and Agrarian Reform Minister Raul Jungmann, include the 284,000 hectare (705,000 acre) Serra da Cotia National Park in Roraima state.
The ministers also announced the creation of four national forests in the states of Amazonas, Para and Acre and two extractivist reserves also in Roraima.
In Brazil, national parks are open to visitors, while national forests are closed to the general public but open to researchers. Extractivist reserves allow local residents to use the forest in sustainable ways.
Muriel Saraguffi, director of the Vitoria Amazonica Foundation which helps manage the Jau National Park in Amazonas state, said the areas will only remain protected if local residents can be enlisted to support the projects.
''They (the local residents) need to be involved as allies in protection and not as adversaries who will be evicted from the area. The ministries of Agrarian Reform, Planning and the Environment also have to work together to implement the parks with the people who live in them,'' Saraguffi said.
The land for these protected areas became available earlier this year through a government program to crack down on land fraud in the Amazon, where some land owners have amassed ranches the size of small European countries.
In June 2000, the Brazilian government asked 3,065 landholders to provide proof of ownership in efforts to strip owners of land obtained through forged titles, a common practice for centuries in Brazil.
Jungmann of the Agrarian Reform Ministry said the government has so far stripped the titles for 23 million hectares (57 million acres) of land and estimated the government would eventually reclaim 47 million hectares (117 million acres).
He said most of the newly seized land would be used to settle poor families, but that any virgin forest would be conserved and turned over to the Environment Ministry.