Day 251 - 17 May 96 - Page 21
1 MR. MORRIS: The area round the roads had been cleared. Have
2 you visited that area round the tributaries of the Araguaia
3 River since 1983?
4 A. Yes. The year I spent in Brazil.
5
6 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If you can turn round. I once did a case and
7 had a professor of orthopaedic surgery standing in a
8 witness box in a corner who got so enchanted by the
9 skeleton which he was using to point out various joints
10 that he was in a little world of his own. It is difficult
11 because you have got the map there.
12 A. Yes, probably the map is my skeleton, it brings it all
13 back, does it not, looking at these, yes.
14
15 Q. I know it is difficult, but if you can try and speak up.
16
17 MR. MORRIS: You can put the map in front of you if that helps?
18 A. No, when I went by the early 1980s there was still
19 devastation going on but the pace had slackened, because
20 doubts were beginning to arise about the long term
21 viability of cutting down this tropical forest for short
22 term gains. There still was jungle clearance going on,
23 there was still feeder roads going into the forest to allow
24 access to more isolated areas of the forest, but it was not
25 being done with quite the same pace, the periods of
26 greatest destruction for this region were the second half
27 of the 1970s really. By the 1980s and right up to today it
28 is still going on. If you go there today you will still
29 see areas of tropical forest being cleared and there will
30 still be burning, but the government is being a little more
31 circumspect, a little more careful, in allowing the
32 construction of new cattle ranches. It has also suspended
33 the system of tax incentives, so companies are now having
34 to invest their own money not government money, and so they
35 have become a little more cautious.
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I would just like to ask you one more question
38 then we will have our 5 minute break. The picture I have
39 is of an area of dense humid tropical forest which you have
40 described. You also referred a moment ago to jungle
41 clearance, which you say was going on down the river and
42 its tributaries. If one wanted to cross that area from
43 east to west or west to east, the area of dense humid
44 forest, how many miles or kilometres do you think it would
45 be between passing from clearer country into the dense
46 forest and to coming out of the dense forest into clearer
47 country in the other direction? Can you give me a picture
48 of that or does the mere question demonstrate a lack of
49 understanding of the terrain?
50 A. I am not quite -- if you are travelling from... You say
51 from east to west?
52
53 Q. Suppose you were going along what is now the route of the
54 BR070, which goes through?
55 A. To Cuiaba.
56 Q.
57 Q. You were traveling from Goiania, where would you get into
58 the dense forest and where would you come out of it again
59 as it was in '71 or '72?
60 A. As it was in '71/72, travelling from Goiania to...
