Rainforest malady

THE BRAZILIAN government swung
into action recently to evict thousands of gold-panners from a 94,000-
sq-kin Yanomami reserve near the
Venezuelan border to save the 9,000
members of South America's largest
Indian tribe from an outbreak of
malaria.

Thousands of panners who left
the reserve to celebrate Carnival elsewhere are being denied re-entry and
aircraft are being despatched to fly
out those who stayed behind on the
reserve.

The government's goal is to protect the Yanomami reserve until the
start of the rainy season in April,
when gold-panning becomes impossible. The panners and miners not
only pollute the waterways, but also
spread venereal diseases and malaria,
which have taken the lives of hundreds of Yanomami. The miners are
also a direct threat to rainforests
(Down To Eafth, January 31, 1993).

Meanwhile, Brazilian environment minister Coutinho Jorge has
been thwarted in his bid to get G-7
funds for the Amazon Pilot Project to
protect rainforests by US and UK
environmentalists, who want the
funds blocked until the recapture of
the killers of Chico Mendes; the
Brazilian rubber-tapper who publicisied the plight of rainforests. It was
agreed at the London G-7 summit in
1990 that Brazil would receive US
$1.5 billion for the Amazon project
(Down To Earth, June 15, 1992).