Death in the rainforest
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2022
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on Post Reports, a journey deep into the Amazon to uncover how the planned redevelopment of a highway could go hand in hand with deforestation and violence.
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Highway BR-319 slices through the heart of the Amazon. Built in the 1970s, it has slowly deteriorated, giving way to muck and mud. Many people who rely on the road are calling for its repair. But scientists warn that easier access to the rainforest will inevitably lead to illegal deforestation, which will soon tip the forest past a point of no return.
Washington Post Rio de Janeiro bureau chief Terry McCoy and photographer Raphael Alves traveled the length of the broken highway to observe the destruction. They also looked at how criminal groups operate in the region, seizing land, razing trees and defending the seized territory with violence.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Martine. |
| 0:03.8 | Just a quick heads up that this story contains descriptions of violence that might be disturbing |
| 0:08.4 | for some listeners. |
| 0:09.9 | So please take care. |
| 0:11.4 | Okay, here's the show. |
| 0:17.2 | Deep in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, there is a highway. |
| 0:21.8 | It's this dilapidated, pothole-marked road that was built in the early 70s. |
| 0:27.2 | What makes this highway important is that it cuts through one of the last contiguous |
| 0:31.4 | passions of rainforests and the Amazon rainforest. |
| 0:35.4 | Terry McCoy is the post-sreoburo chief. |
| 0:38.7 | In October, he traveled to highway BR319. |
| 0:42.6 | It's this gash of a road slicing through the heart of the Amazon. |
| 0:46.4 | He wanted to understand the relationship between the road, the forest, and the people |
| 0:50.4 | who live there. |
| 0:51.7 | When you build a road, you open it up to civilization. |
| 0:55.8 | It's a civilization if not deforestation. |
| 0:58.8 | Every time you build a road that has this ripple effect, it's called the fishbone pattern. |
| 1:05.0 | The road creates the spine of the fish. |
| 1:08.6 | And then you have all these little roads, sometimes are illegal, sometimes are not. |
| 1:12.4 | That branch off of the main road. |
| 1:15.1 | And then they have more roads, a branch off of that. |
| 1:18.1 | And from above, it honestly looks like a fishbone that's spiraling out into the forest. |
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