Vehicles create clouds of dust on a highway leading to Brazil's "middle lands" through a deforested region of the south of Brazil's Amazonian state of Para, Sept. 30, 2004. As any satellite map can show, there is a direct link of road construction and forest destruction. About 18,000 square kilometers is destroyed each year. Many who come to carve an existence from the forest believe that the Amazon exists to be exploited and point to the USA and Europe as examples. In many ways the federal government promotes this situation with rural projects, highway construction and agrarian reform, while at the same time that it tries to stop it through the environmental agency IBAMA or the Federal Police.(AustralFoto/Douglas Engle)

Vehicles create clouds of dust on a highway leading to Brazil's "middle lands" through a deforested region of the south of Brazil's Amazonian state of Para, Sept. 30, 2004. As any satellite map can show, there is a direct link of road construction and forest destruction. About 18,000 square kilometers is destroyed each year. Many who come to carve an existence from the forest believe that the Amazon exists to be exploited and point to the USA and Europe as examples. In many ways the federal government promotes this situation with rural projects, highway construction and agrarian reform, while at the same time that it tries to stop it through the environmental agency IBAMA or the Federal Police.(AustralFoto/Douglas Engle)