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
