Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest
Researchers keep tabs on deforestation in the Amazon by satellite imagery, but to know the reality of what's causing it, you have to be on the ground. Watch this video of researchers Robert Walker's and Eugenio Arima's recent Amazon adventure.
Transcript
00:00:06 the Amazon is the world's largest tropical forest harboring millions of species deforestation there has dropped significantly over the last five years more law enforcement alongside the global recession has probably been the cause but forest loss in the Amazon is still a problem researchers keep tabs on deforestation by satellite but to know the reality of what's causing it you
00:00:35 have to be there in person that was the motivation behind researcher Robert Walker's recent Amazon adventure our objective was to interview loggers and people knowledgeable about the logging sector in order to understand how it is that they actually open the rainforest through their road building activities so Walker along with colleagues Eugenio ARIMA and retail Maria Pereira set out
00:01:02 on a road trip they started at South Felix doe Xingu then flew to sin terrain and drove west along the trans Amazon highway which isn't like any highway most of us the picture the road itself was was absolutely wild uh we were lucky we bought sleeping bags we really didn't know what to expect uh we didn't know how what the road eli whether it be possible and in fact the last leg was
00:01:30 nearly impassable from whom I taught a library it was so wet it was 200 kilometers we didn't see a single vehicle on the road set the road maintenance crews and that no one's on the road it's empty and there are a lot of Jaguars there so if you get stuck in the road you have to sleep with all your windows up or a cat is plant ecology problems they drove 900 miles west in a
00:01:53 rented Jeep from Santa Ram to La Brea a trip which took them nine days the whole trip along the side of the road it was just forced after mile upon mile upon mile of force on the western trans Amazon it is literally a quarter of green force the entire road though they didn't get to interview any loggers they talked with people all along the way they came upon an active
00:02:18 goldmine and were allowed access something very rarely given to outsiders and quite frankly they're not they're not pleasant places nor are they very safe they spoke with a group of Chaya PO Indians learning firsthand about the deals they'd made with loggers in the past a lot of the logging that had occurred in the region had occurred on their historic territories and in a
00:02:43 close-up wildlife encounter they stumbled upon what Walker calls a macaw City it was just one of those magical nature moments that I hadn't had since I was maybe 10 years old in the end they found what is probably the logging frontier in Brazil we're logging both legal and illegal is now concentrated on the way to the vila we get to cross the river it's the Artic ie puana we observe
00:03:14 logging trucks coming from Venus Santo Antonio Dumont okay which is just to the west and they were big trucks mercedes-benz trucks are they call them romeo-juliet trucks they have two cabins or two beds I should say they were stacked with sawn wood and they were coming one after the other with this knowledge on their next trip the team hopes to focus their investigation on
00:03:37 logging in the villa if possible but Walker and company also learned that it's not just logging that threatens these ecosystems the pattern of roads they'd seen from satellite imagery had led them to believe it was logging that was fragmenting the forests and sprawling into virgin land get these very disorganized we call it dendritic fragmentation there are basically
00:04:02 spidery networks of lines on the satellite images it turns out this kind of development was also being produced by settlers ranchers even local governments these groups haven't gotten much attention and past conservation efforts but they could better protect the forests if they built roads and farms and a more orderly pattern and so one of the keys to sustainable
00:04:24 development is to finding the pattern that minimizes these impacts the pattern of opening the native forest in such a way that you have minimal impact on the plants and animals that reside there one of the patterns we believe is potentially sustainable in this regard is fishbone they call it fishbone fragmentation and that's I don't know there's a just a another term for it is
00:04:51 it's you'll see it on satellite images and and it looks like a fishbone looks like a column development can coexist with conservation the moral of the story is it just needs to be done thoughtfully for the National Science Foundation I'm Lisa Rapid burger