08/24/02 -- VICTORY: Brazil Creates Large Rainforest Park

VICTORY

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Brazil Creates Large Rainforest Park – But Destruction Continues

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://www.EnvironmentalSustainability.info/ -- Eco-Portal

http://www.ClimateArk.org/ -- Climate Change Portal

August 24, 2002

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

There has been a bit of good news amongst the continuing tragedy of

Amazonian rainforest destruction. The Brazilian government, intent

upon burnishing its faltering environmental credentials prior to the

Earth Summit 2, has announced a major new rainforest preserve.

Covering 3.8 million hectares (9.4 million acres) – the same size as

Belgium - the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park will be the world's

largest tropical reserve. Establishment of this park is indeed a

victory for those, such as Forests.org and our collaborators, who

support large-scale, strict protection and ecologically based

community development in the World’s entire remaining areas of large

and contiguous natural wildlands.

However, in spite of this significant new protected area and

additional efforts by the Brazilian government to limit deforestation

and encourage "sustainable development," the assault on the Amazon

basin continues. The trend is clear – the Amazon will be mostly

deforested and what remains will be much severely diminished - if

things do not change. Major new threats such as soy production are

emerging as traditional threats including ill-conceived roads, cattle

ranching and illegal logging continue unabated.

Global ecological sustainability depends upon not fragmenting the

Amazon. The Brazilian government must shoulder the global

responsibility of maintaining the Amazon basin as a functioning,

operable whole. Doing so will require vastly expanded protected

areas for most of the region, interspersed with ecologically based

sustainable development initiatives by local peoples. Regional

environmental sustainability in the Amazon and elsewhere is dependent

upon placing ecologically benign development activities within the

context of large and connected protected areas. A vision for the

Amazon that is less grand dooms the Earth to climatic upheavals, mass

loss of biological diversity, and severely limited future development

options. Continued rainforest loss will bring widespread ecological,

economic and social collapse.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: Brazil Creates World's Largest Rainforest Park

http://ens.lycos.com/

Date: August 22, 2002

BRASILIA, Brazil, August 22, 2002 (ENS) - Brazil is establishing the

largest rainforest national park in the world as the country's

contribution to the World Summit on Sustainable Development,

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced today.

Covering 9.4 million acres of the northern Amazon along Brazil's

boundary with French Guyana, the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park

shelters rare jaguars, harpy eagles and 12 percent of all primates

known to exist in the entire Brazilian Amazon.

"With the creation of Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, we are

ensuring the protection of one of the most pristine forests remaining

in the world," said President Cardoso.

"Plants and animals that may be endangered elsewhere will continue to

thrive in our forests forever."

Conservation International (CI) served as a lead nongovernmental

advisor for the park's creation, providing technical assistance

during the planning phase and collecting information about the

region's biological importance.

"Brazil should be congratulated for its long term vision, dedication

and leadership on conserving its precious biodiversity," said CI

president Russell Mittermeier today at the group's headquarters in

Washington, DC. "Since Tumucumaque is one of the greatest unexplored

places on Earth, we can only imagine what undiscovered mysteries will

one day be found in the park," said Mittermeier, who serves as

chairman of the World Conservation Union's Primate Specialist Group,

and has discovered several primates previously unknown to science in

the Brazilian Amazon.

Covering 3.8 million hectares (9.4 million acres), Tumucumaque

Mountains National Park will be the world's largest tropical reserve

- the same size as Belgium and about 500,000 hectares (1.23 million

acres) larger than the state of Rio de Janeiro.

President Cardoso has backed in the project, despite the opposition

of mayors in the region and security sectors of the government itself

who see risks in the fact that the area is on the Brazilian border

with French Guiana. "I believe in persuasion and I have persuasion

power, said the President in June when he proposed the park at a

Johannesburg preparatory conference." If I don't have persuasion, I

have the power."

President Cardoso wants to arrive in South Africa with victories in

the environmental area. Brazil has ratified the Kyoto climate

protocol, setting goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases. "As a

result, Brazil may arrive in Johannesburg with the required moral

strength to state that it is not only preaching, but implementing

measures," said the President.

WWF, the conservation organization, has been working with the

Brazilian government for several years to bring the park to fruition.

WWF will allocate US$1 million to help the Brazilian government

implement the park as part of the Amazon Region Protected Areas

initiative (ARPA) an unprecedented collaborative effort to help

fulfill the Brazilian government's promise to protect the Amazon.

ARPA will be formally initiated by representatives of WWF, the

government of Brazil, the World Bank, and the Global Environmental

Facility at a ceremony during the World Summit on Sustainable

Development in Johannesburg.

"President Cardoso's announcement of the creation of Tumucumaque

National Park is a landmark achievement in global forest conservation

and an historic step forward in efforts to protect the Amazon Basin,"

said Kathryn Fuller, president of WWF-US said today in Washington,

DC.

Eight primate species, 350 bird species and 37 lizard species inhabit

these forests, researchers have found. An estimated 42 percent of all

lizards, and 31 percent of all birds in the Brazilian Amazon live the

new park.

Among these are several species with declining populations in other

parts of their ranges, says Conservation International, including the

jaguar, giant anteater, giant armadillo, harpy eagle, the black

spider monkey, the brown-bearded saki monkey and the white-faced saki

monkey.

Adjoining several other protected areas, the new park will be part of

an immense corridor of biodiversity which contains the headwaters of

the state's biggest rivers, the Oiapoque, the Jari and the Araguari.

The interior of Tumucumaque itself is virtually uninhabited, and

surveys of the area have concluded that no indigenous settlements

exist within the boundaries of the park. Access is limited and area

waterways are difficult to navigate for most of the year.

The new park will be administered in collaboration with Amapá State,

which has a sustainable development program encompassing both

environmental and human needs. The program emphasizes the

preservation of natural resources, and combines modern technologies

with respect for local cultures and income generation for local

communities.

Amapá Governor Dalva Maria de Souza Figueiredo has asked the federal

government for funds to compensate the state for "the immobilization

of 26 percent of the state territory." In a letter to President

Cardoso in June, the governor reaffirms that she is not against the

park, but asks for guarantees of compensation.

In the language of the Apalam and Wayana indigenous groups of the

northeastern Amazon, Tumucumaque means "the rock on top of the

mountain symbolizing a shaman's fight with the spirits," referring to

the granite rock formations rising hundreds of feet above the forest.

Amapá already shelters another nine federal conservation units,

totaling 21 percent of the state's territory. With aboriginal lands,

the areas of Amapá under federal responsibility will now correspond

54.5 percent of the state's territory.

Amapá Environment Secretary Antonio Carlos Da Silva told reporters in

June, "We reiterate, that the park is very welcome and are conscious

of its importance for the protection of biodiversity, however, we ask

for attention to the situation of some cities."

The state officials want improvements in basic sanitation, urban

garbage disposal and highway improvements.

Conservation International-Brazil will continue working with Amapá

State to support the new park by assisting with mapping, enforcement

activities, developing basic infrastructure, inventory of the

region's biodiversity and environmental education for communities

living in areas adjacent to the park.

"Walking through this park today looks much like it would have

hundreds of years ago, since Tumucumaque has not been deforested,"

said José Maria Cardoso da Silva, director for Amazonia, CI-Brazil.

"By creating the largest tropical forest national park in the world,

Brazil has once again demonstrated its commitment to protecting some

of the most precious biodiversity on Earth."

ITEM #2

Title: Brazil creates largest park

Rain forest swath to be protected from development

Date: August 23, 2002

Byline: Michael Astor, Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO - A northern swath of Amazon rain forest bigger than

Maryland and probably containing a treasure trove of undiscovered

animal, insect, and plant species became the world's largest tropical

national park yesterday.

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed a decree creating the

Tumucumaque (too-moo-koo-MAH-kee) Mountains National Park covering a

virtually uninhabited region of virgin rain forest in Amapa State,

along Brazil's northern borders with Surinam and Guyana.

Tumucumaque, which means ''the rock on top of the mountain'' in the

language of the Apalai and Wayana Indians, covers 9.6 million acres

of forest-blanketed mountains with granite outcroppings rising up to

2,300 feet above the forest canopy.

''With the creation of Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, we are

ensuring the protection of one of the most pristine forests remaining

in the world,'' Cardoso said. ''Plants and animals that may be

endangered elsewhere will continue to thrive in our forests

forever.''

The move is one of several environmental measures the government is

preparing ahead of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which

starts Monday in Johannesburg.

Cardoso also signed several laws regulating the use of genetic

material gathered from Brazil's immense variety of plant and animal

species.

At the 10-day summit, Cardoso is expected to announce the Amazon

Region Protected Areas program, putting nearly 200,000 square miles -

including Tumucumaque - under federal protection in national parks

and sustainable development reserves.

Tumucumaque park is 568,000 acres larger than Slonga National Park in

the Democratic Republic of Congo, previously the world's largest

tropical

The forest is inhabited by jaguars, sloths, giant armadillos,

anteaters, harpy owls, and black spider monkeys. Scientists know of

at least eight primate species, 350 bird species, and 37 types of

lizards living in the park.

''I don't have any doubt the park will yield new species,'' said Jose

Pedro de Oliveira Costa, secretary for biodiversity and forests at

Brazil's Environment Ministry.

A number of environmental groups helped create the park, including

the World Wide Fund for Nature and Conservation International.

''The park is very important because it helps consolidate one of the

world's last roadless wildernesses,'' said Roberto Cavalcanti,

director of Conservation International in Brazil. ''Much of the

Amazon is still wild, but there are roads running through it.''

In much of the Amazon, roads have accelerated destruction of the

forest by providing access for settlers, prospectors, and loggers.

Deforestation has destroyed about 15 percent of Brazil's Amazon

rainforest, which today covers about 1.35 million square miles.

Tumucumaque is full of waterfalls, whitewater rapids, and rivers that

are impassable even during the dry season, making it one of the few

remaining regions largely unchanged by humans.

''This park today looks much like it would have hundreds of years

ago, since Tumucumaque has not been deforested,'' said Jose Maria

Cardoso da Silva, Conservation International's director for Amazonia.

Costa hopes millions of dollars in promised funding from the World

Bank and Global Environmental Facility will help Tumucumaque avoid

the fates of other parks in the Amazon, where a shortage of forest

rangers and infrastructure has made parks vulnerable to illegal

mining and logging and virtually inaccessible to the general public.

''We want Tumucumaque to be the first of a series of parks that

include visitors and ecotourism. We want to give it model treatment,

everything we think is necessary for a park,'' Costa said.

Initially, the park will be open only to scientists, who will study

how best to combine tourism with preservation.

''This is an opportunity that doesn't come along very often,'' said

Garo Batmanian, chief executive officer of the World Wild Fund for

Nature.

''Because most of the land in the Amazon is still in the government's

hands, the environment can still have a vision for zoning the

Amazon.''

ITEM #3

Title: Amazon Forest Still Burning Despite the Good Intentions

Date: August 19, 2002

Byline: LARRY ROHTER

RAIRÃO, Brazil, Aug. 19 — By decree, the official burning season here

in the Amazon is supposed to be severely limited in scope and not to

start until Sept. 15. Yet the skies south of here are already thick

with smoke as big landowners set the jungle ablaze to clear the way

for cattle pasture and lucrative crops like soybeans.

The Amazon basin, which is larger than all of Europe and extends over

nine countries, accounts for more than half of what remains of the

world's tropical forests. But in spite of heightened efforts in

recent years to limit deforestation and encourage "sustainable

development," the assault on its resources continues, with Brazil in

the lead.

On Monday, the United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable

Development is to begin in Johannesburg. That conference comes 10

years after an Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was attended by more

than 100 nations, who signed a series of ambitious agreements aimed

at protecting forests, oceans, the atmosphere and wildlife.

As the host country, Brazil was one of the sponsors of those accords.

Within three years, however, the annual deforestation rate in the

Amazon, which accounts for nearly 60 percent of Brazil's territory,

had doubled, to nearly 12,000 square miles, an area the size of

Maryland.

Since then, the rate of destruction has slowed and the government has

begun numerous initiatives aimed at further curbing the cutting and

burning of the forest. Just this week, the government announced the

creation of the world's largest tropical national park, in the

northern state of Amapá near the border with French Guyana.

But the Brazilian jungle is still disappearing at a rate of more than

6,000 square miles a year, an area the size of Connecticut. What is

more, the deforestation is likely to accelerate, environmentalists

warn, as the government moves ahead with an ambitious $43 billion

eight-year infrastructure program known as Brazil Advances, aimed at

improving the livelihoods of the 17 million people in the Amazon.

Over the last 30 years, most destruction in the Amazon has been in a

2,000-mile-long "arc of deforestation" along the southern and eastern

fringe of the jungle. But now the government is moving to turn the

Cuiabá-Santarém road, which slices through the heart of the forest,

into a paved, all-weather highway so that farmers to the south can

more easily transport soybeans and other products to the Amazon River

and then to Europe.

Soybean production has begun to play a big role in the destruction of

the jungle. Both the deforestation here and the growing pressure to

finish paving the highway are to a large extent driven by economic

developments half a world away, in China. Rising incomes there have

created a huge and expanding middle class whose appetite for soybeans

is growing rapidly.

As recently as 1993, the year after the Rio conference, China was

still a soybean exporter. Now it is the world's biggest importer of

soy oil, meal and beans. Brazil, the largest exporter of soy products

after the United States, is rushing to meet that demand.

The potential environmental impact of asphalting the 1,100-mile-long

road is enormous. About 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon

occurs in a 31-mile corridor on either side of highways and roads,

and when these are paved "deforestation goes up tremendously," said

Philip Fearnside, a researcher at the National Institute for Amazon

Research in Manaus, known as INPA.

A paved section of the highway ends barely 12 miles from here,

putting this remote and dusty town of 14,000 on the front line of the

agricultural frontier. Dozens of sawmills now operate along the road

where just a handful existed five years ago, and at night, after

government inspectors have gone home, trucks carrying illegal loads

of valuable hardwoods rattle down side roads that lead deep into the

jungle.

"The sensation is that of being on a battlefield and not having the

weapons to defend ourselves," said the Rev. Anselmo Ferreira Melo,

the parish priest here.

Trairão, founded in 1993, is named for a game fish that has

traditionally been plentiful throughout the Amazon. But the new

lumber yards here are dumping so much sawdust into local streams that

the fish population has dropped sharply.

No one knows exactly the quantity of greenhouse gases Brazil is

already pumping into the atmosphere as a result of such efforts to

tame its vast jungle. Though a national inventory of carbon emissions

was supposed to have been announced three years ago, it still has not

been made public.

But scientists at INPA estimate that Brazil's carbon emissions may

have risen as much as 50 percent since 1990. They calculate that

"land use changes," most of which occur in the Amazon, now pour about

400 million tons of greenhouse gases into the air each year, dwarfing

the 90 million tons annually from fossil fuel use in Brazil and

making it one of the 10 top polluters in the world.

Part of the recent decline in deforestation rates is attributable to

the Brazilian economy, whose rapid growth was responsible for the

spike of the mid-1990's but has since cooled, or simply to weather

patterns. But scientists also credit specific Brazilian government

steps for the improved performance.

One symbolically important step with practical consequences has been

the demarcation of indigenous lands. According to government

statistics, more than 385,000 square miles, or 12 percent of Brazil's

territory, an area larger than England and France combined, has been

formally transferred to Indian control.

As a result, tribes with a warrior tradition, like the Kayapó,

Wamiri-Atroari and Mundurucú, have rushed to defend the reserves set

aside for them and become aggressive defenders of the forest.

"If you put together satellite images of all the fires burning in the

Amazon, you can see the outline of the indigenous areas just from

that," said Stephan Schwartzman, senior scientist at Environmental

Defense in Washington. "Where Indian land starts is where the fires

stop."

In some areas of the Amazon, the Brazilian government's environmental

protection agency, known as Ibama, has also played a leading role in

deterring deforestation. An environmental crimes law passed in 1998

gave the agency, founded in 1989, new enforcement powers, which it

has used, albeit selectively, in raids aimed at arresting and fining

the most blatant violators of the law.

"Ibama is full of problems and underfunded, but they are still making

progress, thanks especially to these blitzes," said Daniel Nepstad of

the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Belém. "The cost of

doing business as a logger has increased and the profit margins have

gone down, and the sense of impunity that existed just a few years

ago has diminished."

But the initiative that the Brazilian government sees as most

promising is in the southern Amazon state of Mato Grosso, where

deforestation is licensed and monitored by satellite.

Though the state's name means "thick jungle" in Portuguese, huge

deforestation began in the 1970's and accelerated with the soybean

boom of the 1990's.

Since the program went into effect late in 1999, deforestation in

Mato Grosso, which has had the fastest growing economy of any

Brazilian state, has declined by more than half, to about 4,600

square miles over the two-year period that ended on Jan 1.

Large ranchers and farmers can clear no more than 20 percent of their

land, and those who exceed that limit are punished with fines and

prison sentences.

"The truth is that nobody ever controlled this, and that you can't

control properties one by one even if you have an entire army of

men," said Federico Muller, director of the state's environmental

protection agency. "But now the satellite does it for us. It's like

Big Brother, an all-seeing eye in the jungle."

But the neighboring states of Pará and Rondônia, where deforestation

has been equally intense, have yet to adopt the initiative. As a

result, loggers, sawmill operators, cattle ranchers, land speculators

and other adventurers have simply moved northward up the Cuiabá-

Santarém highway, deeper into the heart of the jungle, to areas like

this one.

Armed with guns and global positioning satellite locators, loggers

are also pushing into the Tapajós National Park west of Trairão and

other nature reserves. Peasant settlers here say that they have

complaimed to the police and to the environmental protection agency

but that nothing has been "Everything functions on the basis of

bribes or threats, and so Ibama does not act," said José Rodrigues do

Nascimento, who farms 250 acres. "These loggers tell us they have the

authorization to go in there, but they never show any papers, and

because they have gunman, you don't dare to contradict them."

José Carlos Carvalho, the environment minister, acknowledged problems

but promised improvements by next year's dry season, saying that the

states of Pará and Rondônia were now installing the same monitoring

system as Mato Grosso. In addition, he said, the environmental

protection agency is to double the number of its agents, to 2,000.

"We recognize that the predatory occupation of the jungle doesn't

work and has to give way to a system of sustainable development, and

we are moving in that direction," he said.

ITEM #4

Title: Amazon destruction continues as leaders talk

Date: August 23, 2002

PARAGOMINAS, Brazil, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Under cover of a misty

tropical night an unlicensed truck transporting vast tree trunks

trundles along the main road not far from Paragominas, once the

largest logging centre in the Amazon.

A police car flags down the truck and the logs are confiscated. It

marks a tiny victory in the colossal effort to save the Amazon -- the

world's largest tropical forest, which is home to up to 30 percent of

its plant and animal species and covers an area larger than all of

Western Europe.

For environmentalists, Paragominas -- a town founded in 1965 and now

home to 75,000 people -- is a sort of epicentre of Amazon

destruction. It was precisely the kind of place that world leaders

wanted to prevent from developing when they met in Rio de Janeiro in

1992 for the Earth Summit.

As it turned out, between 1992 and the meeting to be held in South

Africa next week at the World Summit on Sustainable Development,

nearly everything went wrong in Paragominas.

In the boom days of the early 1990s, the town was turning out an

estimated $1 billion of tropical timber a year (out of a total from

the Brazilian Amazon of about $2.5 billion) and there were more than

200 sawmills operating, generating 7,000 jobs.

Now, in this area which was blanketed by thick forest 20 years ago,

there is no virgin forest on the horizon as far as the eye can see.

Instead, there are unused fields of tall grass, the occasional burnt-

out tree, and a graveyard of shut-down sawmills with rotting old logs

strewn across their grounds and languishing wooden shacks where the

timber used to be cut.

"This is all over for us now, all the wood has been cut," said

Mauricio Andre Hubner, whose father arrived here in 1981 from

southern Brazil.

About three months ago, the Hubner family's sawmill became the latest

in Paragominas to shut down, leaving about 60 remaining.

Paragominas has come so far in its cycle of boom and bust that even

local politicians -- who in the past had few incentives to question

the logging that was making their towns rich overnight -- have woken

up.

"SYMBOL OF VIOLENCE AND DEVASTATION"

Mayor Sidney Rosa wrote in a newsletter that Paragominas had become a

"symbol of violence and devastation."

The forest's destruction, which amounts to about 15 percent of the

whole Amazon since the mid-70s, continues unabated and still claims

an area about half the size of Belgium every year.

While there are still large tracts of tropical forests standing in

southeast Asia and the Congo basin in Africa, environmentalists focus

on the Amazon's importance because its destruction is relatively new.

The Amazon basin, which extends to neighbouring countries like

Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela as well, represents about 40

percent of the world's remaining tropical forests.

Paulo Barreto, executive director of the Institute of Man and the

Environment of the Amazon (IMAZON) -- whose environmental agency has

produced leading research on Paragominas and the Amazon -- is a

worried man.

"There is a strong risk that the paradigm of Paragominas will be

repeated in the new frontiers," Barreto said.

The 'new frontiers' sends shivers down the spines of

environmentalists.

These are virgin forest areas hundreds of miles further into he

depths of the Amazon than the 'old frontiers' of Paragominas and

other timber towns along what is known as the 'arc of deforestation'

-- which stretches along the Amazon's outer borders.

"Everybody here knew it was going to end one day," said Adriano

D'Agnoluzzo, a manager at Floraplac -- Paragominas' largest private

sector employer, which produces plywood. "If the same example of

deforestation is followed in the new frontiers, the same will happen

there as it has over here."

There are some reasons for optimism, such as a huge radar system to

monitor the Amazon which was inaugurated this year and which

environmentalists hope can be used to improve monitoring of forest

destruction.

Also, IMAZON and other environmental groups are working hard to

introduce sustainable logging, which includes careful cutting which

can maintain the forests.

Another key achievement has been the Pilot Program to Conserve the

Brazilian Rain Forests, which includes Brazil's government, donors

from the G7 industrial countries and the European Union and was set

up in 1992.

It has channelled $350 million to conserving the Amazon, and has made

notable achievements such as demarcating Indian lands equivalent to

the size of Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined.

But there are many reasons for fearing things will go badly. A big

worry is a government plan -- the first in two decades -- to

substantially develop the road network in the Amazon.

ROADS TO COVER ALL AMAZON?

An article published in U.S. journal Science has warned that up to 42

percent of the Amazon could disappear if the road plans go ahead,

although the government has promised to do an environmental impact

study.

It was the completion, in 1960, of the first major Amazon road, which

runs from the capital Brasilia to Belem at the mouth of the Amazon

River, that spurred the development of cities like Paragominas in the

'arc of deforestation' in Para state.

Meanwhile, the southwest of Para -- the second largest region in

Brazil's Amazon -- has already turned into "something comparable to

the Wild West," according to Luis Ercilio do Carmo Faria, the state's

executive director for the environment.

Reports of corruption, lawlessness and an influx of immigrants as

they descend on this 'new frontier' to cut down trees are now

increasingly common, as loggers hope for a repeat of the quick riches

they made in the old timber areas.

One common Amazon tree is worth more than $1,000 -- almost an annual

Brazilian minimum salary. The wood from a mahogany tree -- the most

valuable Amazon species -- can fetch $20,000.

Illegal mahogany logging in this region helped spur Greenpeace to

stage a huge campaign, which resulted in Brazil's government stopping

all mahogany logging and the European Union suspending all imports of

the wood from Brazil. That has helped prompt the government to set up

a task force including the army and environmental agencies to control

the region.

But Carmo Faria is tranquil, saying the much greater awareness and

presence of the state in the new frontiers guarantees that there will

be no repeat of Paragominas. "Comparatively, it will not be so

violent because the state is present," he says. "It will be much

easier to control."

Still, in slum neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Belem, there are

shops advertising: "Mahogany furniture for sale."

"Faced with poverty it is very difficult to fight for the

environment," says Carmo Faria. "We know our limitations."

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