Amazon Deforestation Up By 3.8%, Highest In Four Years

Sao Paulo, Brazil (AHN) - Destruction of Brazil's Amazon rainforest has increased this year for the first time in four years, the government officials said.

According to the National Institute of Space Research, satellite images show that around 11,968 square kilometers (4,600 square miles) was cleared from August 2007 through July this year.

The current defrestration level of rainforest is around 3.8 percent higher compared with 11,532 square kilometers (around 4,440 square miles) to the year earlier in the same period.

The government officials said that the figure could have been higher if the environment ministry had not taken action against illegal logging.

The Brazilian authorities have reportedly successfully reduced deforestration of the world's largest rainforest over the past three years. Amazon rainforest is the largest zone of tropical woodland on the planet.

"We are back to a trend in which deforestation falls," Environment Minister Carlos Minc told reporters in Brasilia, according to Bloomberg News. "I hope the rate drops below 10,000 square kilometers next year."

Minc indicated that many experts had believed that the deforestration rate would rise by as much as 40 percent n the past few years, but the government has been aiming to reduce the logging down to zero percent.

The analysts said that increasing prices for cattle, soybeans and other commodity products had led ranchers or farmers to clear more farm land in the forest.

"We believe it is a setback, but we believe it is also positive in the sense that the expected levels were much higher," Gilberto Camara of the Space Research Institute was quoted saying by BBC News.

"There was a lot of burning on the ground in the second half of 2007, which could have led to a much greater increase in deforestation."

The report by the National Institute of Space Research said that the regions most affected by deforestration include northern Para and some areas in the central Mato Grosso, where a huge producer of soya beans are based.