Index:

–Guatemala: 21) Reforestation efforts fight uphill battle
–Brazil: 22) Amazon development won’t devastate forests? 23) 2,300 cattle seized for PR campaign, 24) Livestock overplayed when soy and illegal / legal loggers are the real problem, 25) Bunge Soy protest leads to 6 arrests, tear gas and rubber bullets, 26) Decree allows for 3.8 million acre Indian reservation, 27) Soy moratorium extended,
–Dry land forests: 28) Survival of 250 million people living in dryland forests questioned
–Tropical forests: 29) 15 million hectares of tropical rainforest lost every year
–World-wide: 30) Earth’s Bad Hair day, 31) Much more important to our well-being than we realize. 32) Changes we made since we started agriculture, 33) Market incentives reward deforestation,

Guatemala:

21) Our tropical rainforest restoration planting down in Guatemala is under way now and going pretty well. I just received Jose’s report. (Jose is our tree planting coordinator in Guatemala — he teaches at the University of San Carlos de Guatemala.) He says that the guys are soft from too much time sitting in school classrooms and they are getting pooped out fast from working in the hot sun. However, the women students are stepping up and digging the pathways and the holes for the tree planting! The guys though are doing great at showing up for lunch (which we provide for the tree planters) and at carrying trees into the planting sites. (See the photos in the attachment below). I’ll have more on the tree planting work tomorrow. Then, somewhat belatedly, I will put reports and packets in the mail for all of you who supported this venture, hopefully by next week. My apologies at being so slow. One more thing. We are considering a joint tree planting venture next summer (2009) if there is sufficient interest. This would bring together American students along with Guatemalan students — plus parents and every one else who wishes to participate. –Fred Krueger I love all of you and your heroic efforts — BUT the real fact of the matter is that native rainforests in Guatemala are being destroyed at an alarming rate and it costs about 1/100th to save a native rain forest from destruction than it does to restore a destroyed rain forest. Our efforts, thus are being mis-directed. This mis-direction of energy is oftentimes orchestrated by the very forces that are continuing to profit from the destruction of the original old-growth rain forests that can NEVER really be restored for even a million dollars an acre. ALL of our efforts, in my opinion, need to be focused on STOPPING further destruction of native rain forests world wide. We are “pissing in the wind” when it comes to “restoration” efforts. For every sprig planted, thousands of old-growth rain forest trees are being destroyed. The evil ones who are responsible for the destruction laugh at our painful efforts to attempt to restore 1/100th of what they are continuing to destroy. ghr@cyberclone.net

Brazil:

22) Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday dismissed claims that development of the Amazon region would devastate the rainforest. “We must have the responsibility to understand the Amazon region has 25 million people, they wish to have TV sets, cars and cell phones,” Lula said in an interview with an international news channel, in response to critics of the Amazon region development. Inhabitants of the Amazon region also have the right to have their consumer desires met, he added. However, Lula emphasized that it could be reduced to a reasonable scope. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace, as well as a number of politicians in Britain and elsewhere, have voiced concern about Brazil’s development program being a threat to the Amazon rainforest, seen by scientists as the “lungs of the Earth” for its important role in absorbing carbon dioxide. On June 5, President Lula signed a decree to create three reserves in the Amazon region to protect the rainforest, two of which are among the largest ones in the country. The same day, Lula signed two more decrees, one extending indefinitely a deadline on restricting the exploitation of mahogany in the Amazon forest, the other ruling for the establishment of a working group within 30 days to define the final details of a fund for the protection and conservation of the Amazon region. http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1453056/amazon_region_devt_will_not_threaten_rainfores
t_lula/

23) Brazil’s government announced it seized 3,100 head of cattle grazing in the Amazon state of Para this month on land that was illegally deforested, the New York Times said. The action by federal police and agents of the country’s environmental agency, Ibama, on June 7 was meant to warn rogue ranchers who allow about 60,000 cattle to graze on deforested Amazonia land, Environment Minister Carlos Minc said yesterday, the Times reported. The seizure marks a strategy to enforce legislation that protects Brazil’s rain forest, the world’s largest, the Times said. The cattle will be auctioned to benefit the country’s Fome Zero food program for the poor, as well as health programs and efforts to remove the livestock, Minc said, the newspaper sad. Brazil became the world’s biggest beef exporter in 2004, the same year that annual deforestation reached a nine-year high of 10,571 square miles (27,379 square kilometers), the Times said. While deforestation fell to a 16-year low of 4,333 square miles last year, environmental group Friends of the Earth recently said that one-third of the country’s fresh beef exports derived from the Amazon region, the Times said. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aOGhAW7sislg&refer=latin_america

24) Because of its cattle, Brazil is among the world’s leading emitters of greenhouse gases. The livestock industry has encroached on the Amazon rainforest and is a leading cause of deforestation. According to its first national inventory, in 1994, logging represented 75 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gases. The destruction of forests, which has accelerated since the 1980s, coincides with the expansion of cattle-raising. From 1994 to 2006, the national herd grew from 158 million to 205 million head, and 82 percent of that increase took place in the Amazon region, according to the study “The Cattle Kingdom” by the environmental group Friends of the Earth-Brazilian Amazon, released in January. Cattle in the country’s Amazon jungle region, which numbered 73.7 million head in 2006, occupied 74 percent of the total deforested area. However, the original cause of deforestation is not cattle-raising, but rather the lack of incentives for sustainable production in the Amazon, said Mario Menezes, assistant director of Friends of the Earth and co-author of the study. Without agricultural regulation, state oversight and development policies, “the expansion is chaotic,” he told Tierramérica. Most land in the Amazon region is publicly owned, but the government does little to monitor it. Many ranchers occupy areas illegally, and spend little to clear the forests, says Paulo Barreto, a researcher with the Institute of Man and the Environment in the Amazon. Meanwhile, restoring degraded pasture land costs two and a half times more, Barreto said. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42912

25) Last week, six peaceful protesters were severely injured by tear gas and rubber bullets in front of a Bunge soy-crushing facility in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Bunge and its shareholders are responsible for this egregious display of violence and must be held accountable. Today I need you to help me flood Bunge CEO Alberto Weisser’s office with faxes demanding that he take responsibility for preventing attacks on peaceful demonstrators. The action in front of Bunge’s plant was part of a series of major protests last week throughout Brazil. Thousands of small farmers and Indigenous people blocked roads and railways and invaded dams and plantations to call attention to the global food crisis and policies that favor agribusiness over small farmers. Hundreds of people protested at the Bunge soy-crushing facility, where they were hoping to reclaim bags of food staples produced by family farmers that were supposed to be distributed to the community. Military police swarmed the peaceful gathering and attacked non-violent protestors. We must hold U.S. corporations accountable for the violence that occurs in and around their facilities. Bunge has a direct line of communication with the police, whereas the protestors do not. The company can demand that the police behave differently. We expect and demand a much higher standard and regard for civil liberties and human rights from Bunge. Add your voice today We can’t let Bunge get away with supporting these violent attacks. http://ga3.org/campaign/bungeprotest/ws87dss9r73dimmj

26) Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva decreed a new 3.8-million-acre Indian reservation Friday in the heart of the Amazon rain forest’s logging frontier. The Bau reservation in Para state had been sought by the Kayapo Indians in their ancestral territory since 1994. But resistance from settlers and loggers slowed its official creation. Brazil’s 1988 constitution declared that all Indian ancestral lands be demarcated and turned over to tribes within five years. While that process has not been completed yet, today about 11 percent of Brazilian territory and nearly 22 percent of the Amazon is in Indian hands. http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/saturday/news/ny-world215736103jun21,0,1
947535.story

27) Soy crushers operating in the Brazilian Amazon have extended a two-year-old moratorium on the purchase of soybeans produced on rainforest lands deforested after 2006, reports Reuters. The agreement — signed by members of Brazilian Vegetable Oils Industry Association (Abiove), a soy industry group that accounts for 94 percent of Brazil’s soy crush — extends the ban through July 23, 2009. Brazil’s environment minister Carlos Minc said the government is working on similar agreements for saw mills, slaughterhouses, and steel mills operating in the Amazon. “The moratorium is a successful initiative by civil society and the soya industry. The Federal Government is entering the process now and is committed to register and license all rural properties in the Amazon biome,” Minc was quoted as saying by Reuters. “Inspired by the success of this initiative, the Brazilian government is negotiating similar approaches with the timber and beef industries.” The agreement comes amid a wider effort by the Brazilian government to improve governance and promote sustainable development in the Amazon region in response to a spike in deforestation during the second half of 2007. Brazil recently cracked down on illegal operations in the Amazon, seizing and selling contraband timber and agricultural products. At the same time the government has offered low interest loans to ranchers, farmers, and loggers who work to minimize their impact on the environment. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0623-soy_amazon.html