Word: ecosystem
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...satellite imagery to show the extent of the burning in 1988. Out-of-control burning first brought me to Brazil in 1989 when I wrote the cover story for the Sept. 18 issue of Time called ?Torching the Amazon.? I have made several trips to parts of this giant ecosystem in neighboring countries since then, but this was my first trip back to the Brazilian Amazon, and there was, amid the rising cause for concern, some good news to report...
...decade ago, for instance, few people would have predicted that in the year 2000, the huge state of Amazonas, next door to Par?, would be the least deforested region in the ecosystem?especially since in earlier administrations the Governor, Amazonino Mendes, had offered to hand out chain saws to anyone wanting one, in order to spur land clearing. (In recent years, Mendes has adopted a slightly softer approach toward the forest.) Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, has grown rapidly in wealth and size in the past 10 years, but without massive tree cutting in surrounding areas. Local soils are notoriously...
...rain forest is not good agricultural land, to put it mildly: the very nature of the ecosystem is to recycle organic matter without enriching the underlying soil. Once cleared, the acidic dirt of the forest floor is exhausted after a few harvests. That in turn causes peasant farmers to keep moving and sell their barren holdings to cattle ranchers looking to buy cleared land on the cheap. So the devastation continues to creep forward. All over the Amazon, I saw vast areas of degraded land where before there was a virtually unbroken expanse of trees. In all, the Amazon contains...
...says Newport's Hiroshi Kanno, 63. Retired people don't need jobs; nor do they need trucks rumbling to and from a big processing plant. And they certainly don't need an outsider bottle-feeding their water to a nation of self-indulgent yuppies. "Taking springwater out of any ecosystem is like taking blood out of people," says John Steinhaus, 62. And so began a war that rages to this day. Country roads are flagged with GO AWAY PERRIER! signs, and villagers brainstorm daily to keep multibillion-dollar Perrier from siphoning a single drop. They've even hired Madison attorney...
...wish to sell off their constitutional right or moral obligation to watch over the land. Especially not when Jim Krohelski of the U.S. Geologic Survey says he doesn't trust Perrier's testing or the state's monitoring and believes the pumping "will have an adverse effect" on the ecosystem...