Word: gmelina
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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, and as his trees died off, he bailed out of the project...
...plant is expected to be towed up the river and put in operation by the mid-1980s. To feed the plants with young trees, a vast reforestation is under way that will clear the land of old growth and establish huge new timber farms. The principal planting is the Gmelina arborea (pronounced malina ar-bor-ea), a hardwood native to Burma and India that grows to 15 in. in diameter in five years and 30 in twelve, or roughly twice as fast as the southern pine, a major source of American pulp...
...Time Wasted. The jungle crushers were not Ludwig's only costly miscalculation. In place of the native forest he planned to plant broad tracts of Gmelina, a fast-growing Asian tree that takes a mere ten years to reach the age when it can be cut for lumber and pulp. In contrast, American cottonwood, which is similar to Gmelina in quality and yield, requires at least 30 years to reach maturity. But again the Amazon proved more complex than Ludwig's experts imagined. His property contained at least two distinct types of soil, one unsuitable for Gmelina. Now about...
...devoured by Amazon bugs, and a supposedly super dredging machine that got hopelessly mired in Amazon mud?the progress at Jari is extraordinary. So far, about 185,000 acres, an area more than ten times the size of Manhattan Island, have been cleared and planted with Caribbean pine and Gmelina. Viewed from the air, the new forest looks as thick and lush as the sections of old native jungle left uncut along the riverbanks. A wild array of undergrowth, burnt away in the initial clearing, quickly grows back among the newly planted trees...
| 1 |