Danger of roads to rainforests

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Mr. Oragahn
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Danger of roads to rainforests

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Aug 30, 2009 3:12 pm

"THE best thing you could do for the Amazon is to bomb all the roads." That might sound like an eco-terrorist's threat, but they're actually the words of Eneas Salati, one of Brazil's most respected scientists. Thomas Lovejoy, a leading American biologist, is equally emphatic: "Roads are the seeds of tropical forest destruction."

They are quite right. Roads are rainforest killers. Without rampant road expansion, tropical forests around the world would not be vanishing at a rate of 50 football fields a minute, an assault that imperils myriad species and spews billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. We will never devise effective strategies to slow rainforest destruction unless we confront this reality.

In our increasingly globalised world, roads are running riot. Brazil has just punched a 1200-kilometre highway (the BR-163) into the heart of the Amazon and is in the process of building another 900-kilometre road (the BR-319) through largely pristine forest. Three new highways are slicing across the Andes, from the Amazon to the Pacific. Road networks in Sumatra are opening up some of the island's last forests to loggers and hunters. A study published in Science found that 52,000 kilometres of logging roads had appeared in the Congo basin between 1976 and 2003 (vol 316, p 1451).

As my colleagues and I reveal in a forthcoming article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, these are just a small sample of the many new road projects slicing through tropical frontiers.

Why are roads so bad for rainforests? Tropical forests have a uniquely complex structure and humid, dark microclimate that sustain a huge number of endemic species. Many of these avoid altered habitats near roads and cannot traverse even narrow road clearings. Others run the risk of being hit by vehicles or killed by people hunting near roads. This can result in diminished or fragmented wildlife populations, and can lead to local extinctions.

In remote frontier areas, where law enforcement is often weak, new roads can open a Pandora's box of other problems, such as illegal logging, colonisation and land speculation. In Brazilian Amazonia, 95 per cent of deforestation and fires occur within 50 kilometres of roads. In Suriname, most illegal gold mines are located near roads. In tropical Africa, hunting is significantly more intensive near roads.

Environmental disasters often begin as a narrow slice into the forest. Rainforests are found mostly in developing nations where there are strong economic incentives to provide access to logging, oil and mineral operations and agribusiness. Once the way is open, waves of legal and illegal road expansion follow. For instance, the Belém-Brasília highway, completed in the 1970s, has developed into a 400-kilometre-wide swathe of forest destruction across the eastern Amazon.

Beyond the forest itself, frontier roads imperil many indigenous peoples, especially those trying to live with limited contact with outsiders. As I write, indigenous groups in the Peruvian Amazon are stridently protesting the proliferation of new oil, gas and logging roads into their traditional territories. The roads bring loggers, gold miners and ranchers who often subjugate the indigenous people. Even worse, the invaders can bring in deadly new diseases.

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PunkMaister
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Re: Danger of roads to rainforests

Post by PunkMaister » Mon Aug 31, 2009 4:44 am

Brazil is also a rapidly growing economic power and to tell the Brazilans they have to forever remain an impoverished third world country for the sake of the Enviroment is an equally bad or worse crime. Could roads be made that are environmentally friendly that go over the trees without cutting down a path through them for example. We need to think outside the box to come out with ideas that are compatible with both development and the environment. my 0.2 cents...

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Re: Danger of roads to rainforests

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Sep 03, 2009 12:43 pm

PunkMaister wrote:Brazil is also a rapidly growing economic power and to tell the Brazilans they have to forever remain an impoverished third world country for the sake of the Enviroment is an equally bad or worse crime. Could roads be made that are environmentally friendly that go over the trees without cutting down a path through them for example. We need to think outside the box to come out with ideas that are compatible with both development and the environment. my 0.2 cents...
Brazil is a very very large country. Thinking that the economy can only survive by the relentless destruction of the environment, to exploit resources and turn the lands into barren surfaces, is absurd and is tantamount to the vampiric consumerist culture that capitalism thrives on, if unchecked.
Brazil is a poor and corrupted country. There's already plenty of land to exploit all around the forests without having to destroy them.

Now, to talk about your idea of long roads passing over the trees, as per bridges... I still see problems. Not only this would be extremely expensive, but would turn out to be impractical for those who'd like to have more exit points, and the problems would still persist at said exit points, with smaller roads branching from there. You have to see it a tree inside the trees.
The better solution would probably require uninterrupted underground roads, and an effective protection of the forests. But the price would just be even higher than for the bridge solution.

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Re: Danger of roads to rainforests

Post by PunkMaister » Fri Sep 04, 2009 2:18 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Brazil is a very very large country. Thinking that the economy can only survive by the relentless destruction of the environment, to exploit resources and turn the lands into barren surfaces, is absurd and is tantamount to the vampiric consumerist culture that capitalism thrives on, if unchecked.
Brazil is a poor and corrupted country. There's already plenty of land to exploit all around the forests without having to destroy them.
First of all this is a blatant copout I never made the claim that they had to destroy their own land but that you cannot impose poverty on them for the sake of the Environment. Which is why I made the suggestion of elevated highways above the treetops. Anyway the Brazilian Rain forest has been in decline since the country decided to make a new capital in the middle of the Amazon Brasilia precisely to encourage development at the time
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Now, to talk about your idea of long roads passing over the trees, as per bridges... I still see problems. Not only this would be extremely expensive, but would turn out to be impractical for those who'd like to have more exit points, and the problems would still persist at said exit points, with smaller roads branching from there. You have to see it a tree inside the trees.
The better solution would probably require uninterrupted underground roads, and an effective protection of the forests. But the price would just be even higher than for the bridge solution.
I think that land needs to be set aside as reserves as well in the Brazilian Amazon jungle and keep development out of those areas, as you said Brazil is a huge country but most of it is occupied by the Amazon jungle itself. Incidentally the biggest threat to the Amazon has not been roads but Slash farming teqniques in which the more impoverished farmers burn acres of jungle to farm on what is essentially useless jungle soil. Incidentally in the region there is now evidence of a very advanced civilization that remain undiscovered because the structures they made were made of wood and not stone but they developed what is called Terra Preta which is the most fertile type of land on this planet to this day no one knows exactly why Terra Preta is so fertile apparently they have not been able to recreate all of the components which is sad because if we did we could literally end world hunger, well when it comes to food supply anyway. Famines are also caused by wars and when you have people shooting at planes, trucks and stealing whatever provisions may arrive there is not much that one can do in that case.

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