Joyous News! Brazil fixes its illegal logging problem once and for all!

Good news for the price of timber, good news for those fighting illegal logging, good news for everyone except for those human beings who prefer to breath oxygen in their air, in fact. Brazil's brilliant plan to stop the wholesale rape of its rainforest is.....to allow it to continue, just make it legal! Here's Mongabay with the story.

Brazil will auction large blocks of the Amazon rainforest to private timber companies as part of an effort to reduce demand for illegal logging, reports Reuters.

The government will grant 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of logging concessions by the end of the year, according to Antonio Carlos Hummel, head of Brazil's National Forestry Service. Within four to five years, 11 million hectares will be auctioned.

Existing concessions cover only 150,000 hectares, yet Brazil is the world's largest producer of tropical timber, mostly due to illegal logging on the poorly governed forest frontier.

Continues here.

A most impressive map of the Amazon rainforest

A couple of weeks ago IKN ran this post with a chart that shows just how much (read 'how little') of the Amazon rainforest is protected by its host countries. Well now the people behind the study RAISG, have released their truly fabulous interactive zoom-in detailed map of the whole region, it's protected areas, its indigenous territories etc etc

Click to enlarge (it gets very big)

The above map is a screenshot from the site, but you should really go to the link right here and have a play for yourself. It really is everything you've ever wanted to know about the Amazon rainforest but were too afraid to ask and you can zoom in and out, change parameters, look in close detail and all the rest. A highly recommended website and superb source material.