Day 240 - 24 Apr 96 - Page 37


     
     1        basically agree with what is there?
     2
     3   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  This is the 1940 to 1983, is it?
     4
     5   MS. STEEL:   Yes.
     6        A.  Those maps are broadly accurate, summarising the stages
     7        of tropical forest clearance since 1940, and the rate of
     8        clearance in Costa Rica got progressively worse and in the
     9        1960s and 1970s was one of the highest in the world.  The
    10        Government calculates that in the late 1970s and early
    11        1980s, for example, annual deforestation was run at some
    12        500 square kilometres a year, which is an enormous area
    13        given the relatively small size of the country, and there
    14        is virtually no primary tropical forest left in Costa Rica
    15        outside protected areas, such as national parks or
    16        biological reserves of which they have various categories.
    17
    18   Q.   McDonald's have said that they get beef from the San Isidro
    19        region in Costa Rica.
    20
    21   MR. RAMPTON:  "Used to get", actually.
    22
    23   MS. STEEL:  I did not know they said that.
    24
    25   MR. MORRIS:  There is some evidence we have not heard of.
    26
    27   MR. RAMPTON: No. Mr. Woolf said they no long are get it from San
    28        Isidro.
    29
    30   MR. MORRIS:  How does he know?.
    31
    32   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Ms. Steel ----
    33
    34   MR. MORRIS:  Mr. Cesca said that they do, anyway.
    35
    36   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just ask about San Isidro.
    37
    38   MS. STEEL:   I do not know whether you want to have an actual
    39        look at this map but I marked where I think San Isidro is
    40        on that map.
    41        A.  It is broadly right.
    42
    43   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I think it is better that Mr. Secrett sees
    44        the larger map.
    45
    46   MS. STEEL:   Okay (Handed).
    47
    48   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is San Isidro?
    49        A.  Yes.
    50 
    51   MS. STEEL:   If you could just give your comments on the state 
    52        of the forests in that area? 
    53        A.  If we take the western seaboard from the coast through
    54        to the central mountain range, both the dry and the wet
    55        forest types along the western seaboard have been largely
    56        cleared.  Most of that clearance has resulted from
    57        agricultural operations of one sort or another of which
    58        cattle ranching is by far the most significant.  In the
    59        early 1980s, the Government of Costa Rica and the Inter
    60        American Development Bank recognised that 70 per cent of

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