Scientists forecast Amazon disaster

Press, 24 April 1979, Page 8

Scientists forecast Amazon disaster

NZPA London A report in the London "Observer” has said that the rapid destruction of the vast forests of the Amazon

in Brazil “could ruin life on earth.” The report by Norman Lewis says the Amazon forest, which is larger than Europe, sends huge amounts of Oxygen into the atmosphere and prevents a build-up of carbon dioxide from the more industrial countries. Denuding the forest to make space for food producing ranches may dras-

tically alter the world’s climate and turn the Amazon into a desert, according to scientists quoted in the article.

“Amazonian wildlife and some 40,000 Indians are in grave danger,” Lewis says. He quoted an unidentified official of Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research as saying: "We are threatened with possibly the greatest ecological disaster in world history.” “Brazilian conservationists are aware of the

danger,” Lewis notes, “but the need to produce more food for a large, poor population took precedence.”

He said a quarter of the forest has been destroyed over the past 60 years, some burnt off by napalm bombing, and he described the road building programme of the 1970 s as “the approach of doomsday.” The latest threat was the discovery by oil companies that it may be economic to make petroleum substitute from wood.