It was supposed to be a good-news story out of the damaged Amazon rainforest: a project that replanted hundreds of thousands of trees in an illegally deforested nature reserve in Brazil.
As nice as it sounds, I don’t think it’s feasible. The Amazon is absolutely massive and not very populated. The logistics of keeping armed guards all around the protected areas sounds like a nightmare. The only way I can see deforestation actually stopping is if cattle, soy and wood stop being lucrative businesses somehow.
I mean, couldn’t policies be attempted to at least make the business less lucrative in protected areas specifically? For example, if a protected area burns down, having a policy of occasionally inspecting that bit of burned land and confiscating any cattle found grazing there, to make illegally cleared land more risky to use?
Do the same thing they do for poachers, have armed guards that shoot to kill and ask questions later.
As nice as it sounds, I don’t think it’s feasible. The Amazon is absolutely massive and not very populated. The logistics of keeping armed guards all around the protected areas sounds like a nightmare. The only way I can see deforestation actually stopping is if cattle, soy and wood stop being lucrative businesses somehow.
I mean, couldn’t policies be attempted to at least make the business less lucrative in protected areas specifically? For example, if a protected area burns down, having a policy of occasionally inspecting that bit of burned land and confiscating any cattle found grazing there, to make illegally cleared land more risky to use?