Deforestation threatens Brazil's Indians

There have been organizations from all around the world that have been fighting to protect the forests in Brazil for ages. Due to Brazilian corruption, members of these organizations have been threatened, killed or chased off. It is now a very dangerous occupation to fight for the rights of these Indians and to protect the rain forests.

It has come down to an all out war. And unfortunately the ones that are winning are the corporations and government who have an unfair advantage. Demonstrates how powerful the lust for money is.

Change we need desperate change around the world.

No matter where you look financial destruction all around.

What can we do about it?

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Brazil continues construction of dam

Brazil goes anyway to build a controversial dam. The government has the concession awarded to nine companies. Earlier, the court determined that the building could not continue.

The government has appealed against that decision and put the plans. The Belo Monte dam, the third largest hydroelectric plant in the world. According to President Lula da Silva, the dam is essential for the Brazilian economy. The mega dam will have a capacity of 11,000 megawatts and has millions of Brazilians of electricity.

According to environmentalists for the dam in the Amazon area of ​​40,000 Indians disappear. The Indians are protesting all day in Parliament.

With the construction of the dam would be 500 square kilometers of rainforest disappear under water. Also, the migration of major fish species are cramped.

reply to post by Johnze


See, the thing isn't that "all the rainforest is being cut down."

It's a patch here, a patch there, a patch over yonder. It rather resembles an M.C. Escher checkerboard. There are lots of trees left, but there's a problem...

A forest ecosystem like this cannot exist in patchwork. Each patch basically becomes an island; the underlying soil is exceptionally poor once the organic layer is gone through,and you end up with claypan. The plants cannot spread through this. Each individual patch is too small to support most larger animals, resulting in either migrations to more solid areas (for creatures such as jaguars or coatimundis that are highly mobile) or, well, just dying out (creatures such as sloths or several varieties of monkey who cannot or will not cross the bare ground)

The open area also has a large drying effecft - the plants and soil are exposed to more wind and sunlight, and retain less water. A good many of these plants cannot tolerate dry, sunny conditions, being adapted to moist, dim understory conditions. They die, the patch of forest they're in shrinks that much more.

Basically you can't chop it up into squares and patches and claim "hey, there's still rainforest!" because there's not. You end up with a few clumps of dying trees in islands of diminising diversity.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


And sadly the world will just watch it happen. Frozen like we are about everything in the world these days