This is John Bachelor, good evening.

Tonight my conversation with Professor Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College turns

on a meeting in Brazil in these last days, Bellum, Brazil, by the leaders of the eight nations

that include the Amazon borders.

Brazil always comes to mind as the Amazon, but it touches so many other nations from Venezuela

all the way down to Peru that the challenge of the Amazon is diffused throughout the continent.

Maybe that's part of the problem, but then again, these leaders are looking at the problem

of deforestation, of illegal gold mining and plunder of the environment, and especially

of the fate of the indigenous people.

Brazil has recently identified the indigenous population in Brazil in the Amazon, not at

less than a million, but at near two million.

In addition, I learned that illegal gold mining is not just in Venezuela along the edges

of that rogue state, but also Peru, which is a country that's gone through turmoil, but

46,000 illegal miners are said to be plundering the Amazon waterways, leaving the poison of

Mercury, which is a byproduct of all of this exploration, into the environment.

There are nearly four billion trees in the Amazon.

It's a neotropical forest, meaning it dates not only to several thousand years ago,

but two millions of years ago, probably a product of the asteroid that struck what is now

Central America, burning down the forest that was there all over the world, and then uppops

the neotropical forest.

As mammals developed into us, the neotropical forest developed into the Amazon.

It also helps the Earth breathe.

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