Word: foresters
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...when stripped of its trees, the land becomes inhospitable. Most of the Amazon's soil is nutrient poor and ill suited to agriculture. The rain forest has an uncanny capacity to flourish in soils that elsewhere would not even support weeds...
Throughout history, would-be pioneers and developers have discovered just how unreceptive the Amazon can be. Henry Ford tried twice to carve rubber empires out of the rain forest in the 1920s and '30s. But when the protective canopy was cut down, the rubber trees withered under the assault of sun, rain and pests. In 1967 Daniel Ludwig, an American billionaire, launched a rashly ambitious project to clear 2.5 million acres of forest and plant Gmelina trees for their timber. He figured that the imported species would not be susceptible to Brazil's pests. Ludwig was wrong...
...failed dreams of yesterday have not discouraged Brazil from conjuring up more grand visions for today. The country has continued to build roads, dams and settlements, often with funding and technical advice from the World Bank, the European Community and Japan. Two of the largest -- and, to the rain forest, most threatening -- projects are Grande Carajas, a giant development program that includes a major mining complex, and Polonoroeste, a highway-and-settlement scheme...
...Grande Carajas Program, located in the eastern Amazon, seeks to exploit Brazil's mineral deposits, perhaps the world's largest, which include iron ore, manganese, bauxite, copper and nickel. The principal iron-ore mine began production in 1985, and its operation has little impact on the forest. The problem, however, is the smelters that convert the ore into pig iron. They are powered by charcoal, and the cheapest way to obtain it is by chopping down the surrounding forests and burning the trees. Environmentalists fear that Grande Carajas will repeat the dismal experience of the state of Minas Gerais...
...huge project, Polonoroeste, the government is trying to develop the sprawling western state of Rondonia. The program, backed by subsidies and built around a highway through the state called BR-364, was designed to relieve population pressures in southern Brazil. But Polonoroeste has made Rondonia the area where rain-forest destruction is most rapid, and the focal point of the fight to save the Amazon...