Facts and Figures

· An area of 589,000 km2, larger than France, has disappeared in the last 30 years. Satellite data has shown that deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon last year (19,532 km2) was greater than at any time since 1995.

· The logging industry in the Amazon is highly wasteful. Seventy percent of all logged timber ends up as unusable fragments or sawdust.

· According to the Brazilian government, approximately 100 million hectares of land, or 20 percent of the entire Amazon region, is held illegally.

· The Samauma tree is known in the Amazon as the "Queen of the Forest" because of its great height which can reach well over 50 metres. Some Indian groups consider the tree sacred. The softwood timber of the Samauma is pink-white and is used by locals to make rafts, while the roots are often used to make huts by forest dwellers. The Samauma tree is now being cut to make cheap plywood for export.

· The Brazilian (Big Leaf) mahogany tree is one of the most well known hardwood species around the world. But it is also a symbol of the environmental and human degradation inflicted upon the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous populations by the logging industry. Since the 18th century, the tropical forests of South America have been plundered for Mahogany for ship building and later for furniture making. Until recently furniture manufacture was the principle end use of Brazilian Mahogany, mainly in the US and the UK. But in 2002 countries at the meeting for the Conventional of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) agreed to regulate the trade of mahogany to ensure it comes from legal and sustainable sources.

· In Brazil's Amazonas State, all plywood and veneer exporting companies were either directly or indirectly involved in illegal logging between 1997 and 1999. In Pará state, the largest exporters are known to have purchased from illegal sources, including the Japanese logging company Eidai do Brasil which exports wood products to Japan, the Netherlands, US and UK.

· Between January 2000 and April 2001, exports from the Brazilian port of Santarem to the Netherlands alone totalled 22,681 cubic metres of wood and wood products.

· Within a period of only two and a half months in 2001, 22,392 cubic metres of wood and wood products were shipped from the Brazilian port of Belem to the US.

· Pará state is the biggest log producer in the Amazon, producing approximately 12 million cubic meters in 1997, of which 19 percent was exported. The remaining was consumed by the Brazilian market. Sao Paulo state consumer 12 percent alone, followed by Minas Gerais (8 percent) and Rio Grande do Sul (6 percent).

· Brazil exported 30,968 tonnes (31,600 tons) of mahogany in 2000. The US alone imported 22,442 tonnes (22,900 tons) or 72.4 percent of the total at US$28.2 million.

· According to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, which monitors deforestation via satellite, the total annual deforested area equalled 19,836 square kilometres between August 1999 and August 2000. This is equivalent to four million soccer fields. This represents a 15 percent increase in deforestation compared to 17,259 from August 1998 to August 1999.