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Wood extraction in the Amazon is a crime. It's aggravated crime if done in indigenous lands. It's aggravated even more if done for illegal mining activities. Th

Wood extraction in the Amazon is a crime. It's aggravated crime if done in indigenous lands. It's aggravated even more if done for illegal mining activities. The state police (civil and military) from the various Brazilian states that compose the Amazon forest has the legal obligation to investigate and arrest criminals within the region. The problem is the region is just too big. But let's assume that somehow all those criminals lose their ability to profit on the product of their crimes altogether, within a 5 to 10 years time span, all the vegetation would be naturally restored. The Amazon forest is unstoppable. I live in the state of São Paulo, far from the Amazon forest, and the vegetation here requires a lot of work to be tamed. If you leave an empty allotment 2 or 3 months without any care, you will get knee height grass and all sorts of "exotic" plants coming out of the ground. The Amazon is orders of magnitude more aggressive than this one. So once you stop the illegal activity, the forest will come back. The problem is not the forest, but the people -- indigenous or not -- affected by the illegal activities. Recently we saw headlines about the murder of two people in the region, an activist and a journalist. So many others have died when they crossed paths with criminals. This is a humanitarian problem before an ecological problem.

Sporktacular 4y ago
The problem is that the current government doesn't WANT to investigate and arrest criminals. They cut funding, merged environmental protection and indigenous affairs into the agricultural ministry. This is well documented. The forest is on the edge of becoming a net carbon producer for the first time. This doesn't simply reverse when it regrows from some saplings. Its capacity to create clouds to replenish water is already heavily compromised. When that stops this simply doesn't reverse. When you burn sections without first clearing it of its animal populations they perish, destroying the ecosystems that often needs animals to help germinate new trees. The mercury used for illegal gold mining doesn't just go out of the river and back into the bottle. Billions of animals die from these actions and the results will be irreversible. To call the Amazon unstoppable, to say that the humans that are dying is the real problem, smacks of the ignorance that has led us to this point.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > The forest is on the edge of becoming a net carbon producer for the first time. Forests in general are stable - _carbon neutral_, unless disturbed. Oceans are where most of the Earth oxygen is converted from CO₂. The real reason why Brazil needs to save the Amazon, for South America, is water supply - rain forest induced water evaporation is main source of water for the Río de la Plata basin - where several of the biggest and developed cities in the South America are.
  - Sporktacular 4y ago
    It's becoming a carbon source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03629-6.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03629-6.epdf But if those cities dry up then what? Economic loss? Not everything is reducible to a price tag. The species in Amazonian ecosystems have as much of a right to exist as any other, including humans. Brazil should save it because it's the right thing to do.
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> But let's assume that somehow all those criminals lose their ability to profit on the product of their crimes altogether, within a 5 to 10 years time span, all the vegetation would be naturally restored. The Amazon forest is unstoppable. Recent research points out that the Amazon (and in fact most Earth's supposedly wild) rainforest is a elaborate example of centuries of forest bio-engineering, and it doesn't simply recover if abandoned; decaying into desert instead. Further bio-engineering would be required to repair it to it's "original" state.

Sporktacular 4y ago

The problem is that the current government doesn't WANT to investigate and arrest criminals. They cut funding, merged environmental protection and indigenous affairs into the agricultural ministry. This is well documented. The forest is on the edge of becoming a net carbon producer for the first time. This doesn't simply reverse when it regrows from some saplings. Its capacity to create clouds to replenish water is already heavily compromised. When that stops this simply doesn't reverse. When you burn sections without first clearing it of its animal populations they perish, destroying the ecosystems that often needs animals to help germinate new trees. The mercury used for illegal gold mining doesn't just go out of the river and back into the bottle. Billions of animals die from these actions and the results will be irreversible. To call the Amazon unstoppable, to say that the humans that are dying is the real problem, smacks of the ignorance that has led us to this point.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> The forest is on the edge of becoming a net carbon producer for the first time. Forests in general are stable - _carbon neutral_, unless disturbed. Oceans are where most of the Earth oxygen is converted from CO₂. The real reason why Brazil needs to save the Amazon, for South America, is water supply - rain forest induced water evaporation is main source of water for the Río de la Plata basin - where several of the biggest and developed cities in the South America are.
- Sporktacular 4y ago
  It's becoming a carbon source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03629-6.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03629-6.epdf But if those cities dry up then what? Economic loss? Not everything is reducible to a price tag. The species in Amazonian ecosystems have as much of a right to exist as any other, including humans. Brazil should save it because it's the right thing to do.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago

> But let's assume that somehow all those criminals lose their ability to profit on the product of their crimes altogether, within a 5 to 10 years time span, all the vegetation would be naturally restored. The Amazon forest is unstoppable. Recent research points out that the Amazon (and in fact most Earth's supposedly wild) rainforest is a elaborate example of centuries of forest bio-engineering, and it doesn't simply recover if abandoned; decaying into desert instead. Further bio-engineering would be required to repair it to it's "original" state.