Crucial illegal road threatens Amazon rainforest
Earlier DU thread: Crucial illegal road threatens Amazon rainforest
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Source: Associated Press
Crucial illegal road threatens Amazon rainforest
By FABIANO MAISONNAVE
August 24, 2022
An illegal dirt road ripping through protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon is now just a few miles shy of connecting two of the worst areas of deforestation in the region, according to satellite images and accounts from people familiar with the area. If the road is completed it will turn a large area of remaining forest into an island, under pressure from human activity on all sides.
Environmentalists have been warning about just this kind of development in the rainforest for decades. Roads are significant because most deforestation occurs alongside them, where access is easier and land value higher.
On the east side of the new road is a massively-deforested area where Brazil’s largest cattle herd, 2.4 million head, now grazes. This municipality of Sao Felix do Xingu is the country’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, thanks to deforestation, according to Climate Observatory, a network of environmental groups. It is roughly the size of Maine and has a population of 136,000.
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The opportunities for new deforestation “in the center of the corridor of protected areas of the Xingu brings the risk of an irreversible breaking of the Amazon rainforest, dividing it into islands of degraded forest, which does not have the strength to resist climate change. We need to protect and maintain large forest corridors to sustain the resilience of the threatened biome,” Biviany Rojas, the program coordinator of Socio-Environmental Institute, a Brazilian non-profit, told the Associated Press.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/science-latin-america-middle-east-africa-asia-pacific-f6e4aa6b9fe7ea35ae3fb092b6d5fd11
This May 2, 2022, photo provided by Xingu + Network shows an illegal road inside a protected area called Terra do Meio (Middle Earth) Ecological Station in Para state, in the Brazilian Amazon. The dirt road is now just a few miles shy of connecting two of the worst areas of deforestation in the region. (Xingu + Network via AP)
This May 2, 2022, photo provided by Xingu + Network shows an illegal road inside a protected area called Terra do Meio (Middle Earth) Ecological Station in Para state, in the Brazilian Amazon. (Xingu + Network via AP)