Bringing Back Our Tropical Forests

Bringing Back Our Tropical Forests — page 3 — and monkeys swing through the trees calling and chattering Colorful frogs lizards and insects appear and quickly disappear again A lucky person might even spy a giant anaconda wrapped around a high branch or a solitary jaguar stalking its prey This is the undisturbed Amazon Brazil today is not so untouched Swidden agriculture or shifting cultivation has been an agricultural practice in tropical areas for generations Farmers clear small areas of land for short periods and then leave the land to return to forest for a longer period These carefully nurtured regions in which crops and forest are rotated provide a livelihood for tropical farmers while maintaining high forest biodiversity However beginning in approximately the 1960s Brazil began using a type of unsustainable swidden agriculture usually referred to as slash and burn agriculture This term can imply that all swidden agriculture is unsustainable however so some avoid using it Workers clear cut or burn the forests to make room for cattle pastures and soybean fields The intensity with which this practice is used has been destroying the rain forest From 1979 to 2005 more than 200 000 square miles 500 000 sq km of Brazilian The changes in the Brazilian Amazon in rain forest were destroyed an area slightly smaller the past decade and the contribution that than Texas From 1996 through 2005 Brazil lost an they have made to slow global warming are unprecedented average of 7 500 square miles 19 400 sq km of rain Doug Boucher Pipa Elias Jordan Faires forest per year But in 2005 things began to change and Sharon Smith Deforestation Success Stories Union of Concerned Scientists 2014 Brazil's deforestation did not stop but it declined by 70 percent between 2005 and 2014 By 2013 the

Bringing Back Our Tropical Forests — page 4 — Soy fields in Brazil cut into large areas of the Amazon rain forest amount lost to deforestation had declined to 2 255 square miles 5 840 sq km per year The country's greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 39 percent between 2005 and 2010 This decrease was the greatest in history AMAZON DEFORESTATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES The Amazon rain forest extends into eight South American countries but 60 percent of it is in Brazil Tropical rain forests are one of Earth's best defenses against global warming because they store more carbon than any other land ecosystem This function is increasingly important as burning fossil fuel adds excess carbon dioxide to the atmosphere Cut forests no longer absorb carbon dioxide so deforestation causes atmospheric carbon levels to rise Crops replacing rain forests absorb only a small percentage of the carbon

Bringing Back Our Tropical Forests — page 5 — dioxide taken up by forests Cutting the rain forests also releases the carbon stored in them speeding up climate change Until the mid 1900s Amazon deforestation was a side effect of subsistence farming Farmers cut trees to grow cattle and food crops for their families and communities Then big agriculture and industry moved in felling trees faster and faster Large cattle ranches soybean fields mines and towns replaced massive areas of forest Roads were built through the Amazon to make it easier to cut and remove trees By 2000 more than three fourths of Amazon deforestation was due to cattle ranching And Brazil's deforestation rate made it the world's third largest producer of greenhouse gases after the United States and China AMAZON'S INDIGENOUS TRIBES Approximately 400 to 500 indigenous tribes live deep within the Amazon rain forest An estimated 50 of them have no contact with the outside world The largest tribe the Yanomami a member of which is pictured has approximately 22 000 members The Akuntsu tribe had only five members in 2014 Tribes harvest rain forest foods and grow crops including bananas papayas corn beans and acai berries At least 180 languages are spoken among the tribes All tribes are threatened by deforestation war disease oil development and drug trafficking Some protected areas safeguard indigenous tribes from these threats But the Amazon provides much more than protection against global warming Tropical forests control world climate through the water cycle The trees release water into the atmosphere affecting local and regional climates as well as rainfall as far away as

Bringing Back Our Tropical Forests — page 6 — Central America and the western United States The trees also suppress air pollution The Amazon is the RUBBER TAPPERS DEFEND THE planet's greatest source of biodiversity containing as RAIN FOREST Rubber tappers collect sap from rubber trees much as 30 percent of all species It provides foods This is the only source of natural rubber and medicines and products not only to local inhabitants tapping is a sustainable use Rubber tappers are also self described guardians of the forest but to the world Destroying the rain forest would These forest vigilantes take on criminal gangs mean the loss of these products now and in the future who seek out old valuable and protected trees such as mahogany Gang members mark the Its rivers are the area's main means of transportation trees and come back later to cut and remove them They export the trees mostly to the United and river fish provide much of the region's protein States Rubber tapper and forest guardian Elizeu Many of the Amazon's indigenous tribes depend on Berçacola says this is how illegal deforestation begins The gangs thin the forest decreasing all the rain forest has to offer They will be displaced as biodiversity and removing seed bearing trees the rain forest is cut The rubber tappers patrol the forest at great risk to themselves Sixteen were killed between 2005 and 2015 Bercacola has been shot at and his wife BRAZIL GETS SERIOUS ABOUT and children have left the state of Rondônia owing to threats DEFORESTATION By the 2000s Brazilians had begun to recognize the serious effects of deforestation When President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected in 2002 he and his minister of the environment Marina Silva formed the PPCDAm Plan for the Prevention and Combating of Deforestation in the Amazon This program expanded Amazon protections begun by the previous president It established protected areas including areas for indigenous peoples and enforced laws against illegal logging

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