Earthprints: Rio Pardo
In international talks over global climate policy, Brazil’s government time and again has stated a goal that environmental activists scoff at: eliminating illegal deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
They scoff because environmentalists believe that Brazil, as guardian of the world’s largest rainforest, should be more ambitious. Eliminating illegal activity, after all, amounts to nothing more than enforcing the law.
Before: Rondonia in a NASA satellite image taken in 1975.
After: Rondonia in 2014.
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In Rondonia, a western Brazilian state about half the size of Ireland, forays into the rainforest by settlers in recent decades went largely unimpeded. Since 1988, about 16 percent of the state has been cleared, according to government data. And that is just a sliver of a total area bigger than Germany that has been razed across the entire Amazon over the same period.
A tree is pictured at sunrise in the village of Rio Pardo near Bom Futuro National Forest in the district of Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil.
A burning tree is pictured near Rio Pardo.
Men try to extinguish a fire at a farm in Rio Pardo near Bom Futuro National Forest.
An aerial view of a deforested plot of the Amazon in Bom Futuro National Forest.
An aerial view shows the Amazon rainforest in Bom Futuro National Forest.
An aerial view shows an illegal logging camp (blue tarpaulin in foreground) in Bom Futuro National Forest near Rio Pardo.
Celina, 66, stands next to Saldanha Hotel in the village of Rio Pardo.
Residents walk on a dirt street illuminated by headlights in Rio Pardo.
A man drives his motorbike past a bus in Rio Pardo.
A man poses on the street in the village of Rio Pardo.
Margarida (L), owner of a petrol station in Rio Pardo, pours petrol into bottles for an electric generator.
A family is pictured outside their house in Rio Pardo.
A boy sits as other children run in the corridors of their school in the village of Rio Pardo. The banner reads "Independence of Brazil".
Francisco Morais, 69, poses in front of a public phone that he owns in Rio Pardo.
Roque sits at the table inside his house in the village of Rio Pardo.
Evangelical pastors stand before a mass is held at their church in the village of Rio Pardo.
People pray during a mass in an evangelical church in the village of Rio Pardo.
Women talk outside a clothing boutique in Rio Pardo.
Telecom workers Marcos (R) and Caio (L), pose next to a phone booth that they installed in Rio Pardo.
Amilton cools off his horse at a petrol station in Rio Pardo.
A horse stands in a pond in Rio Pardo.
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When Edivaldo Fernandes Oliveira first arrived in Rio Pardo in 1999, there were only 120 other people there. Like them, he took to cutting trees and eventually cleared enough land to start a small ranch where more than 100 cattle now graze.
Oliveira and others in Rio Pardo say they did not know at the time that the land was in one of the many national forests Brazil’s government has established, often in vain, to demarcate protected lands.
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