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...

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