Environment of Brazil

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The majority of biodiversity on the planet Earth, approximately two thirds of all species, are found in tropical areas, which is often where developing contries are. Brazil is often said to be the country with the most important biological diversity on the planet because of the huge number and variety of species which are distributed under different ecosystems in several kinds of biomes such as Amazon Rainforest; Atlantic Forest, which included Atlantic Coast restingas; Caatinga; Cerrado; and Pantanal. Being a species-rich ecosystem for fauna and flora, it houses many thousands of species, with many (if not most) of them still undiscovered.

Now, Brazil's environment is under threat because of the (quick) economic and demographic rise. Extensive logging, officially and unofficialy, destroys forests the size of a small country per year, and with it a diverse series of species. Between 2002 and 2006, an area of the Amazon Rainforest the size of South Carolina was completely decimated, for the purposes of raising cattle and woodlogging. By 2020, it is estimated that at least 50% of Brazil's species will be eradicated.

In 2005, Dorothy Stang, a 73 year old American nun, was murdered in a dispute with a local rancher. Stang wanted to preserve a swath of the rainforest, where the rancher wanted to raise cattle. In addition, the Brazilian environmental activists Chico Mendes and Wilson Pinheiro were also murdered in disputes with a local ranchers in 1988 and 1980, respectively. It was not the same ranchers, though.