[Fwd: amazon rain forests]

[Alan Baljeu <abaljeu@attglobal.net>]

This previous warning is very obsolete, as I found after a quick
internet search.  I copied the following from snopes.com, which offers
many supporting references.

 Origins:   There is indeed "only one Brazilian rainforest" -- in the
   Amazon, an area twice as large as the country of France and the home
to
   about half of all the plant and animal species in the world. The
Amazon
   was relatively untouched until the 1970s, but since then its size has
   been reduced by about 14% due to logging and farming activities which
   continue to destroy another six to seven thousand square miles per
year.

   Brazil's current Forest Code, established in 1965, requires
landowners to
   protect a minimum 80% of their pristine rain forest land holdings
from
   development. A draft law recently put before the Brazilian Congress
   proposed that the minimum area of protection be reduced from 80% to
   50% (and that the minimum be reduced from the current 50% to 20% in
   savannah areas as well). The proposed law was shelved by Brazil's
   Congress on 18 May 2000, so the specifics of this petition are now
   outdated (and the e-mail address given is no longer valid). 

   Additional information: 

          Historic Victory for Brazilian Amazon   (forests.org) 

   Last updated:   15 February 2001 


       The URL for this page is
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/brazil.htm