Already 415 thousand square kilometres of the Brazilian Amazon have been deforested, about equivalent in size to Germany. As affirmed by the signatories to this Manifesto, colonists prefer to settle in the vast areas areas already cleared from the forest and do not wish to be pushed into the jungle where living conditions are much harder. It makes no sense to destroy more virgin forest when the result of the deforestation promoted so far are totally absurd in terms of ecological and economic aspects. It is ironic that one of the major economic forces that continues this destructive and disordered penetration of the Amazon forest is very similar to the activity that extinguished Pau Brasil in the beginning of the colonization of Brazil. Today, the logging industry, and especially Mahogany logging, serious threatens the future of much of the Amazon forest.
Mahogany is the most valuable Brazilian timber sold on the international market.
The species is found over a huge area of the southern Amazon covering much of the states of Para, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Rondonia and Acre. Mahogany is a rare tree and its exploitation requires loggers to move into more and more remote forest areas each year. More than 3,000 kilometres of major roads and tens of thousands of kilometres of secondary roads have been illegally pushed in the southern Amazon in the last ten years to extract Mahogany. After cutting out all marketable Mahogany in a given area the logging companies move on, leaving their access roads for colonists, gold miners and displaced poor who consolidate the destruction of the forest. The exploitation of timber in general and the cutting of Mahogany in particular is the driving force leading to forest destruction in the southern Amazon today.