Vanguard | April 22, 2006 | 6 comments

The Amazon Frontier

lauraling

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A look at how the Amazon forest is being developed and how this is affecting preservation efforts.
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    Green,   On Current TV,   Intro,   Outro,   7 more
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    Green,  On Current TV,  Intro,  Sustainability,  11 more
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    lauraling Starring, lauraling Producer, lauraling Correspondent, more
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6 comments // The Amazon Frontier // Video

  • kellypope
    • 0
      kellypope  

    • The people said they need help--how do we give it? Is there anyone already in a position to arrange for people to go there and replant the forest? Something like this takes a lot of hands and a lot of seedlings/seeds. Is there no one in Brazil already working to help them or does this require outside help?

    • 3 years ago
  • 5thElement
  • UWAZell
    • 0
      UWAZell  

    • What a great bloke to continue to strive to maintain not only the diminishing forest, but a way of life for those Native [South] Americans.

      It is sad that the government cannot do more to prevent deforestation, however it is sadder that people have such a blatant disregard for the land.

      Further, I am also interested in what made John move to Brasil in 1994.

    • 3 years ago
  • 6thtradewind
    • 0
      6thtradewind  

    • i found your piece very informative and as it so happened i was working ona project for school so this gave me a lot to wrok with. unfortunately, the situation down there reminds me of what happened with the american indians where they were forced off their lands and then given under the pretense of making up for it, worthles pieces of land then they''d wonder why they had issues witth them

    • 5 years ago
  • joanneshen
    • 0
      joanneshen  

    • John Carter certainly comes across as a likeable fellow, white hat and all. We can never go back to the good old days. As world population continues to grow, development in previously pristine areas like the Amazon is inevitable. It takes enlightened individuals and NGOs to see that those changes are sustainable.

    • 4 years ago
  • MitchKoss
    • 0
      MitchKoss  

    • In November of 2004, Laura Ling and I were preparing to go down to Amazon to watch the Brazilian Federal Police raid ranches in search of indentured servants--ie, slaves. We decided to also look into the ongoing issue of deforestation, so we called up Dan Nepstad, a scientist at Yale University and Wood's Hole to ask him for some tips, and, to our surprise, he suggested that we get in touch a rancher--the sort of person usually cast as one of the villains in a standard Save-the-Trees epic. But Dr. Nepstad's point is that the ongoing deforestation of the Amazon has put matters beyond conventional thinking. And the rancher whom he put us in touch with, an American named John Carter, takes a very unconventional approach to the region's problems. John Carter, an officer in the U.S. Army Rangers during the first Gulf War, has a large ranch in Brazil's Mato Grosso state--on the front lines of deforestation.
      A lot of this comes out in the piece, but what you didn't see exactly is the degree of courage it takes to try to stand up for an ideal in a region that is by and large a lawless frontier. It also takes a terrific stamina to try to organize people--in this case, John's fellow ranchers--for the greater good in a region where everyone is typically out for himself. Is John Carter's struggle worth your attention because he's saving the Amazon forest as an untouched wilderness, or because he's at least trying to do something, even if his goals don't hinge on preserving the Amazon as a totally pristine forest?

    • 4 years ago

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