Image # 1347
chainsawing lumber We drove to the end of a road being cut from the mountains in Northern Ecuador into the Choco rainforest toward the Pacific coast. This is a large area of virgin forest completely without roads just south of the Colombian border. The Choco is also one of the wettest forests on earth. Just north of this spot in Colombia over 700 inches of rain has been measured in one year. We were here at the height of the dry season and it still averaged an inch of rain each day. At the end of the road we camped for the night on the way in. The next morning we packed all of our gear onto horses and went a days walk into the forest. After 21 days, we packed up and came back out. The forests had melted away from the road. Everyone entering the forest carried either a shotgun, a machete or a chainsaw, sometimes two. Nearly everyone entering the forests seems to be carrying either a gun, a chainsaw, or both. Edible wildlife and forest seems to melt away from this assault.This week Brazil plays host to Latin American environment ministers attending the "Rio + 10" summit. The summit is designed to coordinate regional efforts to preserve the Amazon rain forest - the largest tropical forest in the world. Each year a portion of the forest equal in size to Rhode Island is lost to logging, fires and agricultural conversion. The Brazilian govenment remains under intense pressure to develop the Amazon, but some experts -pointing to the large amounts of oxygen produced by the forest - argue that continued deforestation will have adverse effects on regional climate patterns and land productivity. They also point to the resulting loss of biodiversity. This photograph depicts a family settling in a newly cleared area of rain forest in a remote region of Ecuador.
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