US scientists say approval of vast areas of the Amazon rain forest for oil and gas exploration presents a new threat to the forest and the people and animals it shelters.
Conservationists and researchers from Duke University unveiled a study which found that an area the size of Texas and stretching acrosee Blovia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and western Brazil had now been opened to drillbits, the Associated Press reported. The study, carried out with non-governmental groups Save America’s Forests and Landis Life, was published earlier this week in the online journal PLoS, the news services said. The study found that newly awarded oil and gas blocks were now concentrated on some of the most intact areas of the forest, threatening isolated indigenous groups and rare animal and plant species with new pipelines and roads. The study said exploitation of the rain forest is most intense in Peru, where 64 oil and gas blocks cover about 72% of the country’s share of the Amazon, while Brazil is also pressing ahead with exploration in the remote west of the country. "Filling up with a tank of gas could soon have devastating consequences to rain forests, their people and their species," Stuart Pimm, a professor of conservation ecology at Duke and one of the study's authors, was quoted as saying.
Read More
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment