Word: forester
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...tragic. Machadinho, for instance, was supposed to be a model settlement village with gravel roads, schools and health clinics. But when a surge of migrants traveled down BR-364 to Machadinho in 1985, orderly development became a pell- mell land grab. Settlers encountered the familiar scourges of the rain forest: poor soil and inescapable mosquito-borne disease. Decio Fujizaki, a settler who came west four years ago, has just contracted malaria for the umpteenth time. Says he: "I always wanted my own plot of land. If only it wasn't for this wretched disease...
Instead of model settlements, the Polonoroeste project has produced impoverished itinerants. Settlers grow rice, corn, coffee and manioc for a few years until the meager soil is exhausted, then move deeper into the forest to clear new land. The farming and burning thus become a perpetual cycle of depredation. Thousands of pioneers give up on farming altogether and migrate to the Amazon's new cities to find work. For many the net effect of the attempt to colonize Rondonia has been a shift from urban slums to Amazonian slums. Says Donald Sawyer, a demographer from the University of Minas Gerais...
...Indians, says that when the Nambiquara were relocated as part of Polonoroeste, the move severed an intimate connection, forged over generations, to the foods and medicines of their traditional lands. That deprived them of their livelihood and posterity of a wealth of information about the riches of the forest. Says Clay: "Move a hunter-gatherer tribe 50 miles, and they'll starve to death...
Amid the suffering of natives and settlers, the one constant is that deforestation continues. Since 1980 the percentage of Rondonia covered by virgin forest has dropped from 97% to 80%. Says Jim LaFleur, an agricultural consultant with 13 years' experience working on colonization projects in Rondonia: "When I fly over the state, it's shocking. It's like watching a sheet of paper burn from the inside...
Mendes became a hero to environmentalists not only because he fought and died to stop deforestation but also because of the way of life he was defending. The rubber tappers are living proof that poor Brazilians can profit from the forest without destroying it. According to Stephan Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund, seringueiros achieve a higher standard of living by harvesting the forest's bounty than do farmers who cut the forest and plant crops...