Reforesting Rainforests to Save Indigenous People
Correspondent: On the Paraguayan side of this Atlantic rainforest triangle the local
mayor is backing conservation.
Gregoria Areco (Mayor of Presidente Franco, Paraguay): We are now in the spot and
we intend to reconvert into a national park. Into a native forest with our
reforestation plan its an area 4,000 hectares in the zone of national park
which surround the Iguazu falls. We also want to make our own
contributions to this. Why? Because we still have about 150 indigenous
families living here and they need their forests back. We need for these
people.
Our exact plan is that shall be declared a protected area but the Paraguay
government there is a project at parliament at the moment which we
declare all this a protected area and these soy fields would disappear. Sure
they are productive but you can’t ignore the ecological aspect.
Correspondent: When forests are cut down the indigenous people’s will lose
everything. Their source of food, their culture and their way of life, these
people have always cultivated their jungle vegetable plots organically
without chemical fertilizers and pesticides their understanding of ecology
is part of their spiritual vision of the cosmos.
These Guarani children are beginning to learn the white man’s culture at
the brand new school. Can’t relearn from the indigenous people how to
preserve what’s left of the forest, using the forest resources without
destroying them.
Edgar Duarte (Paraguayan NGO ALTER VIDA): We’re looking down here at a typical
rive rine forest which in the case of the river Parana and its tributaries.
There’s fundamental for the preservation of the rivers. These rivers are
characteristically short turbulent and very deep so the survival of these
rivers closely linked to the forest. When these are cut down when they’re
felled then the rivers become silted up. Eroded soils fold into them, the
river bed rises and eventually the rivers disappear. Something which has
already happened to a lovely rivers here in the eastern half of the country.
Apolonio De Sousa (Iguazu National Park-Brazillian Environmental Institute IBAMA):
The purity of the water depends a great deal on tree cover it’s the
forest which protects the rivers from pollution by toxication which affect
them. Large scale agriculture and exploitation Brazil has a very damaging
effect on rivers adequate soil conservation techniques are hardly ever used
in agricultural areas so the agro chemicals run off into rivers. Together
with eroded soil. This causes to release the silt up and is also causing a lot
of the flooding we’re getting these days.
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