The Xingu River that runs through it is one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River. This municipality, larger than Maryland, is Brazil’s eighth-largest greenhouse gas emitter. To the west is an area where three years ago ranchers coordinated the burning of several swaths of virgin forest in an episode famously known as the Day of Fire. It is roughly the size of Maine and has a population of 136,000. This municipality of Sao Felix do Xingu is the country’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, thanks to deforestation, according to Climate Observatory, a network of environmental groups.
On the east side of the new road is a massively-deforested area where Brazil's largest cattle herd, 2.4 million head, now grazes. Roads are significant because most deforestation occurs alongside them, where access is easier and land value higher. If the road is completed it will turn a large area of remaining forest into an island, under pressure from human activity on all sides.Įnvironmentalists have been warning about just this kind of development in the rainforest for decades.
An illegal dirt road ripping through protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon is now just a few miles shy of connecting two of the worst areas of deforestation in the region, according to satellite images and accounts from people familiar with the area.
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