Lost tribe at risk after court victory for Amazon loggers

[Robbien]

Campaigners in the Brazilian Amazon fear a group of as yet uncontacted indigenous peoples in a remote corner of the rainforest face "annihilation" after a court overturned state efforts to protect them from logging firms.

The supreme court ruled that the company can continue logging in the densely forested area at the Pardo river in north-west Mato Grosso state, which borders Bolivia. In his ruling, Judge Luiz Fux said that the company Sulmap Sul Amazonia would suffer "irreversible damage" if logging was banned.

. . .

The rights group Survival International, which is campaigning to save the Rio Pardo peoples from loggers, has called on the government to fulfil its constitutional duty to protect them, saying the "the annihilation of a tribe, however small, is genocide."

Logging firms, both domestic and foreign, are spearheading the advance of other business interests deeper into the undisturbed forest. Deforestation is running at record levels as a result. Official figures put last year's total deforestation at 10,000 square miles, larger than Wales. Some government analysts believe that even this is an underestimate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/brazil/story/0,12462,1486280,00.html

[chlamor]

1. These are the People who know the way

If you take a map of the world and mark where there are remaining pockets of biodiversity you will find it corresponds precisely and without exception to where there are remaining pockets of indigenous people. Western culture hasn't a clue as to how to live sustainably and knows not how to Listen.

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.
--Cree Indian Proverb

[Zorra]

2. last year's total deforestation at 10,000 square miles, larger than Wales

Is this crazy? It really is crazy, isn't it? Like really nuts?
:cry:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

3. ...

:cry: for the people
:cry: for the forest

[chlamor]

4. Read This People