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Minc said the environment ministry will bring criminal charges against all of them. The government will also create an environmental police force with 3,000 heavily armed and specially trained officers to help combat illegal deforestion.

Carlos Minc, the Brazilian environment minister, said the upcoming national elections were partly to blame, with mayors in the Amazon region ignoring illegal loggers in the hope of gaining votes locally.

be strengthened, not weakened. Robin Lustig reports from the Amazon.

Within the next few months, the Brazilian government is going to have to decide whether to approve proposals to relax the Forest Code, which is designed to protect the Amazon rainforest. Farmers and agricultural businesses want to be allowed to cultivate more of their land, but environmentalists say the code should

Amazo

Conservation

communities may work harder to protect those resource

locals find work as tour guides and discover that their jobs depend on local conservation efforts

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) says that deforestation during the month of May amounted to 268 square miles, a rise of 144 percent over May 2010. 35 percent of the clearing occurred in Mato Grosso, the state where agricultural expansion is fast-occurring.

Brazil's first woman president, Dilma Rousseff wants to eliminate more than 86,000 hectares of protected areas in the Amazon

The immediate reason? To make way for at least two large hydroelectric dams being worked out on paper, including the Tapajos project – an 8,000 megawatt power station the government would like to see built on the border of Para and Amazonas states.

The (Brazilian) President is backtracking on Brazil's environmental commitments, and will use any means necessary to push through an agenda of expensive mega-infrastructure projects in the Amazon

The review, published in the journal Conservation Biology, highlights destruction and degradation of ecosystems as the main threat. In Australia, agriculture has altered or destroyed half of all woodland and forests. Around 70% of the remaining forest has been damaged by logging. Loss of habitats is behind 80% of threatened species, the report claims.

More than 2,500 invasive plant species have colonised Australia and New Zealand, competing for sunlight and nutrients. Many have been introduced by governments, horticulturists and hunters. In addition, the report says, average temperatures in Australia have increased, in line with climate change predictions, forcing some species towards Antarctica and others to higher, cooler ground.

natural attractions

advancing social, economic, and environmental objectives in developing countrie

ew opportunities for small-enterprise investment and employment

Profits from deforestation range from near zero to thousand of dollars a hectare.In some places, there are huge incentives to convert or degrade forest.In Cameroon, oil palm and intensive cocoa cultivation has a net present value of more than $1,400 a hectare.In Brazil's cerrado, some conversions result in land values over $3,000 a hectare.And India offers very high values for land devoted to coffee cultivation in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot.