In the early 2000s, deforestation levels in the Brazilian Amazon rose so tremendously that, faced with both national and international pressure, the federal government decided to implement forest timber management as a way to curb the destruction. The 2006 Public Forest Management Law established standards for “the efficient use of the forests and local sustainable development.” The same act created the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB), designed to grant management concessions via public bidding to companies, cooperatives and community associations in federal public forest areas. The SFB also monitors the concessions for exploring timber, non-timber resources (nuts, rubber, oils), and services, such as ecological tourism. “Forest management is very different from deforestation. While the former removes only a few trees of commercial value from a given area, the latter eliminates all trees and converts the forest into an agricultural area,” Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) in Brazil, told Mongabay. “If only all timber extraction were done under a governance process, following environmental laws and regulations.” In that economic activity, an average of three to six trees are extracted per hectare (2.4 acres). One hectare of the Amazon forest can have over 250 tree species; more than 100 of those have timber value. The same area unit has about 200 adult trees and 1,000 young ones, estimates the Institute of Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora), a Brazilian NGO. Linked to the Ministry of the Environment, the Brazilian Forest Service wants to speed up…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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