NONESUCH EXPEDITIONS   FOUNDED IN 1962
    
 
 

Decades of Destruction
 
This was a forest of giant trees with a vibrant, living canopy. More species of plants and animals than in the rest of the world put together lived here. Now there are just skeletons. Perhaps not even that......
The rape of Amazonia began in the late 1960's. It was not just in Brasil although it was the focal point country. Brasil in the 1960s had a military government with the goal of taking the country from a coffee economy to the 21st century in one giant leap. One project involved a push to 'open-up' Amazonia , at that time one of the worlds's last untamed wildernesses. An Amazon mega-plan was set in motion with the help of international banks. A great road system was planned and set in motion.The way has been opened for people to settle, farm and use the resources.
 
The burning forest
The wasted forest
Waste from a plywood factory
Erosion follows the destruction
 
By the mid-1980's the rainforest was burning. It was being torn down, settled and farmed.    An area the size of Belgium vanished in one year alone. Now over a quarter of a century later the rainforest is being reduced at an unprecedented scale and the Brasilian TransAmazonica Highway is being paved end to end. At the southern edge of the Amazon basin in Bolivia agricultural development is at an all time high and there are areas where the forest is being turned into a desert. With a growing world population and demand for energy, is the extinction inevitible?
 
ETHANOL AND THE AMAZON a South American Pictures Collection
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THE NONESUCH - FLOWER OF BRISTOL
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