Satellite pictures show 7,000 fires burning in the Amazon
Each half hour, another species is lost forever. Each minute, another 100 acres is destroyed. When Columbus arrived in the Americas, the Amazon Indians numbered eight million. Today, only 200,000 survive.
This photograph was taken in the state of Rondonia, Brazil. Once the richest ecosystem on earth, this land can now barely support a few cattle--and this only with government subsidies. The richness existed within the plantcover, which recycled itself. Alone, the soil can grow only one season of meager crops. First the trees are cut and burned. After a year of crops, toxic shrubs take over, so the land is burned again to clear it for few seasons of cattle ranching. Finally the land is too depleted for further ranching and deteriorates to inedible scrub.
Wherever the Trans-Amazonian highway leads, burning, mining, and logging quickly follow.
It takes many acres of once-rich tropical rainforest to support one cow temporarily.
Severe erosion in the rainforest follows deforestation; run-off clay permanently clogs streams.
