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Brazil has failed miserably in its global responsibility to protect the Amazon rainforest - the lungs of the planet. The unprecedented loss of old growth forest is a catastrophe of global proportion. It hastens global climate change, obliterates the habit of millions of species, and lays waste to the homelands and way-of-life of traditional forest peoples."

- Christopher Hatch, Campaigns Director

The figures released by the National Space Research Institute confirm what environmental and human rights organizations have long held to be true: the Amazon is being destroyed at record levels. Studies show that 6,500 square miles of forest - an area larger than Connecticut - were destroyed by commercial logging and other human activities last year, up from 5,100 square miles in 1997. The institute did not count areas destroyed by forest fires, including a massive prairie fire in the northern state of Roraima last year that burned more than 4,200 square miles.

"There's no exaggeration," said Hatch: "the destruction of the Amazon will be the greatest natural catastrophe in the history of human civilization. Brazil is most at fault, but consumers and governments around the world have a role to play."

Americans purchase old growth wood products from Brazil such as mahogany and some types of plywood. Pulped old growth rainforests go into toilet paper and cellulose products, including rayon, camera film and cigarette filters.

RAN has challenged companies like Home Depot to stop selling Amazon rainforest woods, and other old growth woods. RAN and other groups are calling for an international ban on the continued logging and destruction of the world's remaining old growth forests.

Around the world, old growth forests are falling at an alarming rate. Reports indicate that burning in the Brazilian Amazon has increased 28 percent since 1996. In the ancient temperate rainforests of British Columbia, a timber industry spokesman recently indicated that more than 85 percent of the trees cut down are old growth.

Only 22 percent of the world's old growth forests remain intact; in the United States, less than 4 percent of the old growth forests are still standing.

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