Brazil to allow miles of selective logging in effort to preserve the Amazon

abcnews.go.com:

Brazil’s Forest Service has announced a plan to bring a massive area of Amazon rainforest currently vulnerable to illegal deforestation under national governance Tuesday

BRASILIA, Brazil — To combat ongoing destruction in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil announced a plan Tuesday to dramatically expand selective logging to an area the size of Costa Rica over the next two years.

In Brazil, vast forest lands are designated as public yet have no special protection or enforcement and are vulnerable to land grabbing and illegal deforestation. Criminals frequently take over land and clear it, hoping the government will eventually recognize them as owners, which usually happens.

“The main goal of forest concessions is the conservation of these areas," said Renato Rosenberg, director of forest concessions for the Brazilian Forest Service, during an online press conference. «They also create jobs and income in parts of the Amazon that would otherwise have little economic activity.”

Companies that get timber concessions have to follow strict rules. They can log up to six trees per hectare (2.5 acres) over a 30-year period. Protected species, such as Brazil nut, and older, seed-producing trees are off limits.

The idea is that granting permission to timber companies to take a limited number of trees gives them a stake in overseeing the forest, something the Brazilian government cannot afford to do. Several studies show that illegal deforestation in concession areas is significantly lower than outside them.

Eventually, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva plans to treat as much as 310,000 square kilometers (112,000 square miles) of public undesignated Amazon rainforest this way — an area the size of Italy.

A working group is