The Hindu : International : Roads speed destruction of rainforest

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Sunday, Apr 22, 2007
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International

Roads speed destruction of rainforest

Tom Phillips

— PHOTO: AP

Aerial view of a deforested area in Novo Progreso, Brazil, in this Sept. 2004 file photo.

Trans-Iriri highway (BRAZIL): Officially Geroan's chainsaw shop doesn't exist. Nor does the newly opened petrol station next door, or the motorbike workshop or even the Uniao supermarket, a rickety shack where the dusty shelves droop under the weight of dozens of cachaca spirit bottles.

This is the Trans-Iriri highway, a clandestine yet very real road that cuts hundreds of miles through an area of the Brazilian Amazon called the Terra do Meio, or Middle Land.

But look at virtually any map of Brazil and you won't find any of these places. Officially the Trans-Iriri doesn't exist.

Illegal roads, or viscinais - often built by illegal loggers looking to cash in on the world's largest rainforest - represent one of the biggest challenges to the Brazilian Government in its fight against deforestation. It is estimated that there are more than 168,000 km of viscinais in the Amazon region - illegal dirt tracks that meander through indigenous territories, government land and ecological reserves and which pave the way for the continued destruction of the world's largest rainforest.

At around 180 km, the Trans-Iriri, which cuts westward across the Middle Land from Sao Felix do Xingu, is the king of these illegal roads.

Government officials recently claimed some success in reducing deforestation, saying that from 2005-2006 about 10,300 square km was cleared, 11 per cent less than the previous year. Yet supported by this network of hidden roads loggers continue to destroy the forest at an astonishing rate.

In the state of Para, where the Trans-Iriri is located, satellite images produced for the Government show that deforestation has jumped by 50 per cent since 2004.

Sao Felix do Xingu, the municipality where the Trans-Iriri begins, remains for the fifth year running the Brazilian champion of deforestation, with around 300 square miles cleared between 2005 and 2006, according to the government.

Hemmed in by the Xingu and Iriri rivers, the Middle Land - an expanse the size of Scotland - is at the centre of this destruction. Since the 1990s loggers have swept along the Trans-Iriri highway, cutting secondary paths - picadas - into the forest and gradually replacing rainforest with sprawling cattle ranches.

Since 2005 the Brazilian authorities have created two huge preservation areas in this region, known as conservation units.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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