Joe Leahy – The Financial Times, 4/21/2014
Brazilian municipalities are turning to drones as they prepare to implement a tough new law designed to save the Amazon from total deforestation.
Municipal authorities in the Amazon region, the biggest of which covers double the size of Scotland, are looking to use drones to map properties and monitor whether farmers and others are maintaining the minimum of forest cover required under the new forest code.
“With the acquisition of a drone, we would have a better result, we would have a panoramic view of how this process of recuperation is progressing,” said Gercilene Meira, a specialist with the state environmental secretariat in the municipality of Alta Floresta, in Mato Grosso state. “We have done some tests using balloons but it was not sufficient.”
