Brazilian Senate Bill Will Cut Rainforest Protection, Suspend Fines For Illegal Loggging Before 2008

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The base text approved by the Senate would reduce the preservation requirement to 50 percent in states where 65 percent of the land is already included in indigenous reservations or conservation units. Just one state, Amapa, falls under that category. Two others, Amazonia and Roraima, are close to reaching it.

The new law would also allow agriculture and cattle grazing closer to environmentally fragile areas: riversides, the tops and flanks of hills, and the land around springs. Currently, hillsides can't be cleared to prevent erosion, and a minimum of 98 feet (30 meters) must be kept forested around rivers. The new code allows logging on slopes of up to 45 degrees, and reduces the preservation area around rivers by half.

It also redefines riverbeds as areas covered by water most of the year, instead of during peak flow times, shrinking the amount of protected area around them. In vast, flat forests like the Amazon, the water level of a river can rise 32 feet (10 meters) during the wet season. Each year, flooding covers 154,441 square miles (400,000 square kilometers) in the Amazon, said Maria Tereza Piedade, head of the ecology, monitoring and sustainable use group within the National Institute for Amazon Research.

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The pending bill would do some of that by suspending fines issued for land cleared illegally before July 2008, allowing infractors to replant more cheaply, using vegetation that is only half native and employing tax breaks. Small farmers — those with less than 990 acres (400 hectares) of land — wouldn't need to replant anything cleared before 2008.

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=143244262