Brazil's "Middle Lands"

A worker carries a bag of cattle feed onto a barge for shipment to federal land, background, land known as the "middle lands" in the south of Brazil's Amazonian state of Para, Oct. 1, 2004. As any satellite map can show, there is a direct link of road construction and forest destruction. As roads improve, migration increases, forest is cleared to make way got ranches and towns. Currently about 18,000 square kilometers is destroyed each year. 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)

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A worker carries a bag of cattle feed onto a barge for shipment to federal land, background, land known as the "middle lands" in the south of Brazil's Amazonian state of Para, Oct. 1, 2004. As any satellite map can show, there is a direct link of road construction and forest destruction. As roads improve, migration increases, forest is cleared to make way got ranches and towns. Currently about 18,000 square kilometers is destroyed each year. 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)

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