Brazil nut tree

Brazil nut trees (Bertollethia excelsa) are protected by law in Brazil, but it is very unlikely that trees left standing in cattle fields or soy beans plantations will remain safe or bearing fruit for long time. They are pollinated by Euglossine bees that remain in the forest for the flowers of certain species of orquid that male bees need in their reproductive system and dont grow on Brazil nut trees. On the top of that, big Amazon wind storms eventually drop the unprotected trees.

A brief visit to a Brazil nut factory at Labrea

Another environmentalist bites the dust in Brazil..how many more will??

Maria do Espirito Santo Silva and José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva, leader of Project Agroextrativista Praialta-Piranheira were killed early on Tuesday (24), 50 km from Nova Ipixuna, southeastern Pará, in the community of Maçaranduba.

The threats against the couple's life of gatherers began around 2008. According to relatives, strangers roamed the house of Mary and Joseph Claudius, usually at night, firing shots into the air. Sometimes, they came to target the animals owned by the couple. The timing coincided with the intimidation of the leaders extractive complaint against loggers in the region, constantly progressing area PAEX to extract timber species such as walnut, jatoba and angelim.

To Athanagild Matos, Director of Regional CNS Bethlehem, the death of Jose Claudio Da Silva and Maria is an irreparable loss. "They leave us a lesson, which is the ideal of the Amazon Forest: allow the 'forest people' can live with quality, sustainably with the environment, " said Matos. "We are in contact with federal prosecutors, federal police and other institutions. We support strongly the investigations, that this crime does not go unpunished, "said the Director of the CNS.

Brazil's forest code....not quite yet

The Congress decided to wait a bit to vote it.

What is the Forest Code?
The Brazilian Forest Code is the progressive environment legislation that helps protect the Brazilian Amazon (and all other native Brazilian forests) and is a cornerstone to Brazil's efforts to protect biodiversity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

For the last 12 years, NGOs have been fighting to protect this legislation but representatives of agribusiness, biofuels and energy sectors - as well as members of Congress that predominantly represent the rural sector - are pushing for dramatic changes to the Code. The proposed new Forest Code would reduce or even eliminate forest protection and allow deforestation across the board.

Currently, farms and settlements have to conserve 80% of the forest on their land (so-called 'Legal Reserves'), and use it for sustainable timber management - they cannot destroy it. Under the proposed new Forest Code, this could be reduced to 50% in large areas, and as far as 0% in small areas (up to 400 hectares). If all of these areas are deforested, they would release at least 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere - that is 7 times more than the emissions Brazil committed to cut in Copenhagen.

Under the new Code. an amnesty would be given to anyone who committed forest crimes up to July 22, 2008. The new Code's proponents claim that this will promote economic development and ensure that Brazil, the world's second large crop producer and first large beef exporter, will be able "to feed the world."

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Sustainable logging!

What is this?

Soya bean fied

Imperceptive leaf-frog

Morpho butterfly

Dendrobates with tadpoles

Dendrobates

Sta Lucia Woods

www.bosque-santa.blogspot.com

At home avec Pinon

Meeting at home wirh Jackson Rego(UFAM) Timoty(Univ. of Utrecht)Laudi from Uni. pres. Figueiredo and Pinon Friaes, writer and environmentalist from Mte Alegre Amazon!

Chapada das Mangabeiras

Concentrates quite a number of endemic and threatened species. I worked on the protection of such amazing ecossytem(Cerrado) when soybeans megaprojects were only sneaking into it. Maned wolves, Hyacinth Macaws, Blue and Yellow macaws, Giant Armadillo, Red and green macaws, Sun Parakeet, Giant Anteater are some of the species

I had seeen Titi monkeys using a stick as tool, here the species are Capuchins.
They use rocks to crack palm nuts. It is amazing and fun to watch them.

Hyacinth Macaws were the major target by bird trapper.
Some of them joined us in project

Red and Green macaws nest in cliffs cavities as oppose to

tree holes like in the Amazon

Extremes are getting more extremes

Mamiraua Eco-station

was founded by my late friend Marcio Ayres and Luis Carlos Marigo and certainly others Brazilian conservationist. It has more than one million hectares of Amazon floodplain, an ecossystem that represents less the 5% of the Amazon Basin.

I had the privilege of visiting several times, the latest with Alan Dean Foster, author of Startrek, Starwars, Alien and hundreds of other sci-fi books.

The result of our visit was The drowning World, a sci-fi book with the atmosphere based in the Varzea.

My dear Alan dedicated it to me, how cool.

Other good memories of Mamiraua included amazing sights of White Uakari, a.k.a.English monkeys used as flagship of the project.