Forest Management essays

Forest Management essays Both the local people of Amazonian and the government of that area play a part in managing the forest. In the late 1970s, IBAMA- Brazils Environment Agency was set up to try and prevent the burning of the rainforest. Millions of acres were being burnt; in 1987 alone 20 million acres. Local farmers were paid to start fires, to provide new land for expansion. This may have seemed a good approach at first, as more capital may be brought in from the land regained through cattle ranches etc. Although Our Nature programme intervened, it is an organisation through which the government tried to prevent the fires, as the consequences of these slash and burn techniques used, are devastating! The land burnt cannot be regained, and methane is released when the trees are burnt which contributes to Global Warming. The local people though dont have many alternatives they burn the forests to feed themselves and expand their cattle ranches. In the short term the landowners made money, but the fores t suffered severe consequences. Also once Tin Ore was discovered in the area, there was even more reason to burn the forest and let the mining companies move in. The mines and Hydro Electric Dams helped to pay the $18 billion debt that Brazil owed. So it is possible to say that due to the state that the Amazonian region (still classified as a developing region) is in i.e. in severe debt, that it was not possible to stop them using their resources to help overcome the debt they owed to other countries. Although in contrast sometimes their debt problem is positively used, for example, in 1993 the debt-for-nature-swaps occurred. Non- governmental conservation groups have been able to buy heavily discounted Third World Debt, offering to write it off if the country concerned invests in conservation programmes. In the rainforest these areas are replaced with grassland or cropland, which exposes the soil to the tropi...