Brazil: Amazon rainforest destruction worsens

Amazon rainforest destruction worsens

Noticias Aliadas Thursday, June 9, 2005

The soya cultivations and vegetable coal productions are accelerating the loss of the Brazilian Amazon forests. According to data updated at the end of May, the environment ministry reported that 26,000 km² (10,038 m²) have disappeared since August 2004 in the Mato Grosso state, near the Bolivian border, where land has been cleared for soya farming.

The ministry’s figures also note a daily destruction of 12,000 trees in the states of Maranhao and Para, in the country’s northeast, for the production of vegetable coal, which is used by steel companies for the production of cast-iron.

"Eighty percent of the vegetable coal that supplies the cast-iron plants in Maranhao and Para comes from the illegal timber from native forest," said a Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources press release. "This means the destruction of 120,000 trees per day."