Ask many people what comes to mind when they think of the Amazon Basin, and the terms “green”, “lush”, “humid”, and “plant and animal diversity” might be some of their responses. Just as likely, “deforestation”, “slash-and-burn agriculture” and “extinction” might follow. But the perception of the Amazon to the outside world has changed dramatically over the past 500 years. Early explorers of the Amazon often referred to the new land as “Green Hell”, due to the hardships they encountered in such a foreign environment (Gheerbrant, 1988). More recent discoveries of the biological treasures of the Amazon, and the global significance of its preservation, have led many to believe it is a paradise, and one worth saving. How did this change of perception come about, from the Amazon Basin viewed as a massive, unexploited forest range to the overharvested, fragile environment that we are now fighting to preserve? A journey through the history of the Amazon may lead us toward a greater understanding of the current environmental state of the Amazon Basin and the changes that created the need for conservation.

Early Explorers and Colonization of South America

In the 15th century, countries of the Old World began their competition in a race to find new land and water routes to increase trade and revenues, and expand their territories in the process. Portugal, known for its seaworthy vessels, and Spain, ever searching for gold, were among the first to arrive in South America. In 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral landed in present day Brazil and claimed the territory for Portugal under the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which had divided the unknown world between the empires of Spain and Portugal (Levine, 1999). Meanwhile, Spanish conquistadors (1530s) were staking their claim on the western coast of South America, ending the reign of the Incan Empire which had previously covered present-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and large parts of Argentina and Chile (Harris & Hutchison, 1998). Spain also settled on Colombia’s northern coast in 1525. Dutch settlers set up trade posts in Guyana and Suriname in the early 17th century (Harris and Hutchison, 1998).

As the numbers in the colonies slowly grew, so did the discoveries of the wealth of resources the Amazon held. Gold was discovered in the late 17th century and both indigenous people and African slaves were used in the mining process (Hecht and Cockburn, 1989). Sugar cane was the first commercial crop to be grown on the coasts of Brazil and exported to Europe.

Foreign naturalists were fascinated by the amazing biodiversity of the rainforest, and the enormous catalogs of native plants collected by Alexandre von Humboldt in 1799 and insects by Henry Walter Bates in 1848 are still used by modern scientists (Gheerbrant, 1988). While early naturalists did not focus their research on discovering economical uses of the rain forest, their reports on the abundance of plant and animal diversity may have fueled future exploitation. English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1889) wrote:

It is a vulgar error, copied and repeated from one book to another, that in the tropics the luxuriance of the vegetation overpowers the efforts of man. Just the reverse is the case: nature and climate are nowhere so favourable to the laborer and I fearlessly assert that here, the ‘primeval’ forest can be converted into rich pasture and meadow land, into cultivated fields, gardens and orchards…

A commercial discovery by French scientist Charles Marie de La Condamine was the rubber tree, used for centuries by the indigenous people. While rubber trees existed in many other tropical regions of the world, Amazonian rubber was unique in its quality, yield, and abundance (Furneaux, 1969). In 1743, La Condamine smuggled an Amazonian rubber plant back to Europe and a booming industry grew as scientists unveiled rubber’s useful properties. In 1888, the air-filled rubber tire was created, and bikes and automobiles around the world were ready to be fitted. Rubber production in regions of modern Brazil and Bolivia soared and again large numbers of indigenous people were enslaved to harvest this “black gold” (Gheerbrant, 1969). The prosperity that flowed through the Brazilian cities of Manuas and Belem was short-lived. In 1910, rubber plantations were rapidly expanding in Southeast Asia. This was largely a result of approximately 70,000 rubber seeds taken from Brazil by Sir Henry A. Wickham, cultivated at England’s Kew Botanical Garden, and then transplanted to Malaysia (Wagley, 1971; Furneaux, 1969). Amazonian rubber trees, over-tapped and plagued with a leaf disease from being so closely planted, no longer fueled the monopoly on the rubber industry. The booming rubber cities slowly shut down and interest in Amazonian commerce flagged. The next push for development would not come from the colonizers, but rather from the newly independent Amazonian countries struggling to find resources to fund their own new economies.

Development and Industry: The 20th Century

The extractive nature (overharvesting seemingly limitless supplies for immediate profit) of the commercial rubber industry set the tone for the next century of Amazon commerce. Globalized trade, fueled by the Industrial Revolution, was more efficient than ever and raw materials for production were sought in increasing amounts. While Brazil and many of the countries that contained the Amazon basin gained their independence in the 19th century, their young and unstable governments made it easier for wealthy foreign investors and companies to try to capitalize on Amazonian resources.

Wary of its resources and profits being pilfered by foreigners, the Brazilian government set out to develop its heavily-forested interior, away from the colonized seaports where foreigners owned large tracts of land (Stone, 1985). This “March to the West” development was initially conceived by President Getulio Vargas, and funding for the expansion came in part from a revived rubber industry required for the Allied Forces of World War II, and from US loans to develop Brazilian raw materials (Hecht & Cockburn, 1989; Davis, 1977). Another major step, both symbolically and economically, was the creation of the capital city, Brasilia, in the country’s interior in 1960 (Stone, 1985). A large-scale colonization program called “Operation Amazon” was the first of several government attempts at relocating northeastern Brazilians to settle and farm the forests. Lured by the promise of cheap land, impoverished Brazilians began to settle along the road that connected Brasilia to the seaport of Belem, where many would discover the fruitlessness of cultivating the infertile rain forest soil.

Still, long-term development plans continued to emerge under successive government agencies. SUDAM (Superintendendency for the Development of Amazonia) offered development incentives for corporate cattle ranchers and rainforest industrialization (Stone, 1985). Roads were slowly etched into the forests, and in 1970, the Trans-Amazon highway network was begun. This network, featuring three pioneering highways, was completed within the decade and connected all the major cities of the Brazilian Amazon interior (Davis, 1977). The push to clear the land for cattle (using both physical and chemical means), a new highway system, and large scale mining projects significantly sped up the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (Davis, 1977).

Exploitation of mineral resources in Brazil also contributed to the environmental problems. The discovery of one of the world’s largest iron ore fields led to the creation of the Grand Carajas project, which was comprised of an extensive collection of railways, hydroelectric plants, and massive refineries to process the ore (Stone, 1985). This project would utilize 90 million hectares of Brazilian rain forest, including agricultural and urban development projects to complement the mining development (Stone, 1985).

Brazil was not the only Amazonian country expanding in industrial development. The 1920 discovery of a large oil reserve below Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, led to a rapid influx of industrial oil companies (Hoag, 2000). Oil fields were also discovered in Ecuador in the late 1960s by Texaco Oil Company, making Ecuador the second largest oil producer in Latin America in the 1970s and attracting billions of dollars in foreign loans (Jochnick, 2001). With little government control over the development of the oil industry, large tracts of pristine forests were cut down to allow for pipelines and oil wells.

It was not until the late 1970s that commercial logging of the vast tracts of Amazon rain forest began. A report released by SUDAM in 1985 predicted that Brazilian Amazon could lead the world in timber production, following assertions that the timber industry in both Africa and Asia would be largely exhausted within the next 30 years (Davis, 1977). At the prospect of a waning logging industry in Southeast Asia, Asian logging companies began to seek the rights to harvest rain forest in the small countries of Guyana and Suriname in the 1990s. In 1995, 25% of Suriname was slated for logging by foreign timber companies (RAN, 1995). At the same time, the Brazilian National Congress placed a moratorium on new mahogany logging for two years in response to both voracious rates of illegal hardwood logging and CITES (Convention on International Trade for Endangered Species) inclusion of mahogany as an endangered species (RAN, 1996).

People of the Forest and Their Role in Conservation

The connection between the indigenous people of the Amazon basin and its conservation is crucial to understanding the state of the Amazon today. The ancestors of the South American indigenous population are believed to have migrated down from North America approximately 10,000-12,000 years ago (Meggers, 1996). During that period, great empires were created and hundreds of different languages and nations developed (Rocha, 2000). The pre-colonization population of indigenous people was estimated to be several million; today, their population has been reduced to about 300,000, due largely to the introduction of foreign disease to which the Indians had little resistance (Rocha, 2000; Levine, 1999). In addition to disease, the indigenous people suffered from colonization through slavery as they worked the rubber plantations and gold mines, enduring countless atrocities at the hands of overseers (Furneaux, 1969). In 1910, a young colonel named Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon founded the Indian Protection Service in response to the human rights violations of the rubber industry, the first organization to represent the rights of the indigenous people. In time, the economic pressures to harvest these labor-intensive commodities declined and little interest was taken in the Amazon and the indigenous people living there. But the problems for the indigenous people were only beginning.

As the Amazon rain forest was opened to industrialized enterprises in the 1960s, the once-remote forest tribes were exposed to the forces of modern technology and disease. Large-scale clearing of land for ranching, timber, and agriculture, as well as relocated settlers, encroached on the territories of the indigenous people, but they had no legally-recognized boundaries to claim (Roskin, 1995). Even the official Brazilian Indian affairs agency, FUNAI (originally known as the Indian Protective Services), wrongly declared tracts of rain forest to be empty of indigenous populations to hasten the development of those regions (Rocha, 2000).

Many of the early industries were incompatible with the subsistence lifestyle of the forest-living indigenous people. The Brazilian and Venezuelan gold rush of the 1980s brought thousands of wildcat miners into isolated indigenous areas, and indigenous people were killed for their presence in mining areas (Rocha, 1999; Gheerbrant, 1998). During the decade of the gold rush, 15% of the Yanomami tribe also perished as a result of disease exposure from miners (Rocha, 1999). Oil and mineral exploration in Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador left behind environmental disasters known only to the local populations that were being affected by polluted water and waste products. Because of the direct impact these environmental changes had on the survival of the indigenous Amazon people, it was imperative for these groups to form leadership alliances to make their voices heard to the modern world.

In 1975, the South American Indian Council was formed in an effort to delineate and protect the rights of indigenous people, particularly concerning the lack of demarcation of their lands (Gheerbrant, 1988). Early governmental attempts at creating indigenous reserves, however, were widely ignored by ranchers (Davis, 1977). In Columbia, oil exploration by foreign companies on the ancestral land of the U’wa tribe has been hampered by the collective efforts of the tribe, whose 5,000 members have threatened to commit mass suicide if the development proceeds (Hale, 2001). Similar complaints by the Sekoya tribe in Ecuador against the environmental damages inflicted on their land by foreign crude oil companies that resulted in a $1.5 billion lawsuit filed by the tribe (RAN, 1996b).

Perhaps the most publicized battle against forest-clearing development in the Amazon was led by Brazilian Chico Mendes. Born into a rubber-tapping community, Chico led a peaceful, yet powerful resistance against the clearing of forests by cattle ranchers in the 1970s and 1980s (Schwartzman, 1998). He united rubber-workers for the cause and a founded a union movement (Revkin, 1990). With assistance from foreign non-profit organizations such as the National Wildlife Federation and the Environmental Defense Fund, Chico and anthropologist Mary Helena Allegretti pressed forward with their idea of “extractive reserves” (Schwartzman, 1998). These parcels of ecologically protected forest would be managed by the local community to extract sustainable products (such as rubber or Brazil nuts) without disrupting the local ecology (Nogueira Neto, 1998). Although Chico was assassinated by a rancher’s son in 1988, his life work was a catalyst for future forest preservation efforts and activism by those living and working in the Amazon forest.

Modern Conservation Efforts in Amazonia

In the latter half of the 20th century, scientific research on the ecology of rain forests began to shed light on how rain forest ecosystems must be maintained. In 1958, Brazilian scientist Felisberto de Carmargo published a paper that cast doubt on the fertility of rain forest soil, particularly with regard to agricultural development (Stone, 1985). Part of his research investigated the difference in soil fertility between the varzea floodplains, which was relatively fertile from the water-carried silt, and the terra firme, highlands that did not usually flood and were nutrient-deficient.

While Carmargo studied soil productivity, Brazilian scientist Eneas Salati was investigating the water cycle of the Amazon basin. Of particular interest to Salati was how water was distributed over forested and non-forested areas. While much of the rain in the Amazon is generated from the Atlantic Ocean, forested areas produce nearly half of the rain that fall on them through a process called evapo-transpiration (Stone, 1985). These findings would lead to other investigations on desertification and global warming as a result of deforestation.

In the 1970s, as the effects of rampant development began to surface, Paulo Nogueira Neto, Brazilian biologist and Special Secretary to the Environment, recognized the need for conservation-related policies and pushed for changing legislation. In 1979, a grand experiment known as the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems was undertaken by US biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy, with the support of Brazil’s National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA), The Smithsonian Institute, and World Wildlife Fund (Stone, 1985). This ongoing project examines forest fragments of different sizes to determine how size may affect rain forest ecosystem regeneration and biodiversity.

Shortly after the project began, the Brazilian governmental program Projecto RADAM released the first estimates of deforestation in Amazonia, suggesting that 2% of the rain forest had been degraded (Stone, 1985). Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at INPA, clarified these conservative estimates by demonstrating how secondary growth forests were nearly indistinguishable from virgin rainforests on radar after just a few years of growth. By 1990, satellite imagery suggested that 8.5% of Amazonia’s primary rainforest had been cleared (CEPS, 2001).

As Amazonia deforestation rates increased as a result of farming, ranching, fires, illegal and legal logging, and mineral extractions, so did the pressure to find ways to subdue the rate of development. This pressure came mainly from three sources: international conservation organizations, Amazonian governmental conservation agencies, and both indigenous and non-indigenous Amazonian people.

Foreign NGOs and conservation agencies in the Amazon grew steadily in number during the last two decades of the 20th century. Conservation International, Rainforest Action Network, World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and The Smithsonian Institution are a few of many organizations working towards a global education on the plight of Amazonia and its important contribution to the well-being of the planet. Often working in conjunction with Amazonian governments and institutions, these organizations looked for ways to promote sustainable development of the most valuable of Amazonian resources: biodiversity.

In the same period, Amazonian agencies were also responding to the environmental crises. In 1978, the Amazonian Cooperation Treaty was signed to coordinate the interests of the eight countries that share the Amazon basin (SELA, 2000). The Brazilian government created the Nossa Natureza program in 1988 to tackle deforestation issues and also hosted the famous 1992 Earth Summit in a historical move away from its past 30 years of destructive development (Carvalho, 1998). In 1992, the Amazon Work Group (GTA), a network of 400 Amazon NGOs, was created to distribute government funds for conservation organizations. The creation of national reserves in each of the countries was a conservation priority, with Peru’s Manu Biosphere Reserve (established in 2000), Suriname's Central Nature Reserve (1998), Bolivia’s Madidi National Park (1995) all representing excellent examples of biodiversity reserves.

Understandably, both indigenous and non-indigenous people whose lives depend on the protection of the Amazon have worked hard at its preservation. In Ecuador, Columbia, and Venezuela, local citizens have protested the development of both governmental and foreign industries on their lands without their consent (RAN,1996; SF Chronicle, 1998; Reuters, 1998). The leaders of indigenous communities joined together to fight for land rights, and the governments of Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador slowly began to delineate indigenous boundaries and set aside parcels of land for their use. While the diversity and populations of the indigenous communities have plummeted, groups such as Amazon Alliance (formed of US-based environmental organizations and the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples' Organizations of the Amazon Basin, COICA) and Uni-Acre (indigenous people working towards sustainable development and local policy-making) are fighting to protect what is left of their heritage and homelands (Rocha, 1999).

As the new millennium begins, the process of conservation in the Amazon is far from complete. Research projects such as the Amazon-GIS project, which allows both scientists and the general public access to interactive maps of Amazon development, may help to expand our understanding of the changing Amazon Basin and its future. Increased lines of global communication and trade have made this planet smaller than ever. With hope, this newfound world interdependence may aid the conservation of the single greatest concentration of biodiversity on earth- that of Amazonia.