Brazil's "Middle Lands"

A worker pries apart a Brazil-nut tree on federal land known as "terra do meio," or "middle lands," referring to its location between two major rivers, in Brazil's Amazonian state of Para, Oct. 2, 2004. The Amazonian problems of deforestation, wood trafficking, habitat destruction, slave labor, land grabbing, and violence are all intertwined as colonization of the region accelerates. 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)

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A worker pries apart a Brazil-nut tree on federal land known as "terra do meio," or "middle lands," referring to its location between two major rivers, in Brazil's Amazonian state of Para, Oct. 2, 2004. The Amazonian problems of deforestation, wood trafficking, habitat destruction, slave labor, land grabbing, and violence are all intertwined as colonization of the region accelerates. 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)

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