Murders of Rural Activists up 10 Percent in Brazil

Associated Press, 03/04/2013

A land rights watchdog group says the number of rural activists killed in the country rose 10 percent from 2011 to 2012, with most deaths occurring in the Amazon forest region.

The Catholic Land Pastoral group said in a report Monday that illegal logging and the resulting conflicts were responsible for the majority of the 32 murders of local activists in Brazil last year.

November saw the greatest number of killings. There were six deaths in Para state and seven in Rondonia state. Both are at the center of disputes involving illegal loggers.

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Amazon deforestation destroyed area almost as big as the United Kingdom in 10 years

Associated Press/The Washington Post, 12/04/2012

Deforestation in the Amazon destroyed an area almost as big as the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2010, environmental watchdog agencies said Tuesday.

The study prepared by the Amazon Information Network was released in Bolivia. It showed that close to 93,000 square miles (240,000 square kilometers) of Amazon rainforest were devastated in the 10-year period, the network said in a statement.

The main culprits are illegal logging, the construction of highways, mining, farming and ranching, the construction of hydroelectric dams and oil and gas drilling and exploration.

Sixty-three percent of the rainforest’s 2.4 million square miles (6.1 million square kilometers) are in Brazil, and 80.4 percent of the 2000-2010 deforestation occurred in that country, the study said. Peru was responsible for 6.2 percent of the deforestation, and Colombia came in third with 5 percent.

The pace of Amazon deforestation in Brazil and the other countries, with the exception of Colombia and French Guiana, has slowed, the study said.

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How illegal logging in Brazil’s Amazon turns ‘legal’

Sue Branford – BBC, 11/28/2012

Small settler communities are seeing their land targeted by loggers, BBC.

Deforestation in Brazil’s huge Amazon region has slowed in recent years, and this week the government said it was at its lowest level since monitoring began 24 years ago. But despite tougher regulations, unscrupulous loggers are still finding ways to get timber out of the jungle and selling it as legally felled wood, locals say.

Fabio Lourenco de Souza, a young Brazilian farmer, lives in a settlement known as PDS Esperanca (Hope), in the Xingu river valley in eastern Amazonia.

Although the land is rich in tropical timber, along with most of the 300 families in the settlement, he wants nothing to do with loggers.

“It makes no sense at all for us to start logging the timber on our settlement,” says Fabio, who stops work on the construction of a new wooden house for himself and his family to talk. “The logging companies would not pay us enough for the wood, and would destroy the forest, and we need it for the future of our children.”

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Google launches cultural map of Brazil’s Amazon tribe

AFP, 06/18/2012

Google unveiled a cultural map of Brazil’s Surui indigenous people, a tool that will help the Amazonian tribe share their knowledge of the forest and fight illegal logging.

The map, the result of a five-year partnership between Surui chief Almir and the US technology giant, was released online for the first time at a business forum held on the sidelines of the UN Rio+20 conference on sustainable development.

The map, a collection of picture and videos mapping historical sites and offering 3D visualisation of Surui territory in the northwestern Brazilian state of Rondonia, is available on the site http://www.paiter.org as well as on Google Earth.

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Loggers threaten Brazil Amazon residents: Amnesty

AFP/France 24, 04/25/2012

An illegal woodcutting site at an Amazon forest reserve in Brazil in 2011. Communities in remote corners of Brazil's Amazon jungle are facing repeated assaults and death threats from illegal loggers who want to steal their lands, Amnesty International said Wednesday. Source: France 24

Communities in remote corners of Brazil’s Amazon jungle are facing repeated assaults and death threats from illegal loggers who want to steal their lands, Amnesty International said Wednesday.

The human rights group said there was no police presence in parts of Brazil’s northwestern Amazonas state and no investigation into illegal activities reportedly taking place there.

“Those living in the region are in danger,” it said in a statement, urging Brazilian authorities to protect local residents and stop the illegal logging.

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