Word: virginal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Last of a Dying Breed (Virgin...
That's why scientists are so worried about the paving of BR-163. In the Brazilian Amazon, roughly 75% of deforestation has occurred within 30 miles of a paved road. Despite laws prohibiting settlement in virgin lands, politicians, who see settlers as voters, have encouraged Brazil's 10 million landless poor to migrate into the interior, torching forest as they go. But the rain forest is not good agricultural land, and many of the farmers sell out to cattle ranchers. The only reason enormous stretches of the forest did not burn down in 1998 was that paved roads...
...music. In 1992 his band, the Wallflowers, released its self-titled debut. It was a critical and commercial flop. "I thought [40,000 copies sold] was tremendous," Dylan says. "But obviously, from a business point of view, that's not so outstanding." After a change of labels (from Virgin to Interscope), the band's second album, Bringing Down the Horse, became a surprise multiplatinum...
...pushed replanting from the outset. His partners and employees try to encourage neighbors to reduce their vulnerability to fire. But most lack the means to take effective action even if they have the will. He wonders why the government can?t settle the landless on land that is not virgin forest. ?incra dumps people in the forest and thinks they are finished with their responsibilities,? he says. Yet baranek still sees the road as inevitable, and a good thing. ?You can?t stop progress,? he says and shrugs, ?and it will connect Santar?m to the rest of Brazil...
...Viana?s government, along with others, is exploring every opportunity to find profit in standing forest. In fact, with the world increasingly alarmed about global warming, state governments in the Amazon see a potential gold mine in the use of virgin forest as a storehouse for atmospheric carbon. The Amazon Basin releases between 100 million and 300 million tons of carbon a year into the atmosphere through deforestation; the amount doubles in years when fires devastate the forest. The U.N.-sponsored greenhouse-gas agreement, worked out in Kyoto in 1998 to combat the threat of climate change (not yet ratified...