The destruction of the rainforests is happening at a great rate and must be stopped now. Congress, Al Gore , says 1/ "The devastation of the rainforest is just unbelievable. It's one of the great tragedies of all history." Last year the smoke in Porto Velho, the capital of the Brazilian state of Rondonia, was so thick the airport had to be shut down. 2/ "An estimated 12,350 square miles of Brazilian rain???f?orest an area larger than Belgium, was reduced to ashes." The land after being burned is furtile for only three or four years. The settlers are poor and hard worked. They are destroying the forests and receive minimal benifit. After the settlers move out the land is taken over by ranchers. The land is hardly a good pasture and will never replenish itself. Loggers are cutting trees and spoiling streams. Dams are cutting off streams, flooding land, and disturbing the lives of natives. In Peru the forests are being cleared for the production of coca for cocaine production. Tropical rainforests cover only seven percent of the earth. One of the large programss destroying the forest is Grande Carajas, which includes a giant mining complex, Polonoroiste, and a highway and settlement scheme. The process for iron-ore includes the need for charcoal, easily obtained by destroying the rain forest 1,2/ "Playing With Fire". ‚Time?, September 18, 198ƒ9pg. 62-63 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE RAIN FOREST.

             trees.

             Close to half the rain forest's are already gone including those in India, Banglaedesh, Sri Lanka, and Haiti. 3/ "An estimated 15 percent of the rain forest have been cleared. At the currant rate the forests will be nothing but scrubby grasslands in 50 to 100 years." "It's dangerous to say the forest will disappear by a particular year," says Philip Fearnside of Brazil's National Insitute for Research in the Amazon, "but unless things change, the forest will disappear." 4/ The destruction of the rainforest would affect more than just South America.