Managed forestry offers hope of saving Amazon

By Raymond Colitt

MONTE DOURADO, Brazil (Reuters) - Buzzing chain saws and heavy machinery hauling logs through the Amazon jungle look at first like reckless destruction. But a forestry project on the Jari River in northern Brazil is being hailed as a model for preserving the world's largest rain forest.

Evidence in January that the pace of Amazon deforestation has increased after falling for nearly three years renewed a fierce public debate over saving the forest. It also opened a rift in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government.

Loggers illegally clear vast swathes of forest for timber and farmland every year, wreaking environmental havoc while creating little long-term income.

But a handful of forest management projects have emerged as conservation models, extracting resources with little impact.

"Selling certified timber harvested in a sustainable way is the only solution for the Amazon," said Augusto Praxedes Neto, a manager at Brazilian pulp and paper company Grupo ORSA.

For five years ORSA has managed the world's largest private tropical forest, located on either side of the Jari River in the northeastern Amazon region.

It harvests only 30 cubic meters (12,713 board feet) of timber per hectare (2.47 acres) every 30 years, just under the natural regeneration rate. Trees are felled and transported so as to cause minimal impact on the forest and are recorded in a computerized inventory.

"I can tell a customer in Europe which tree his table is made of," said operations manager Euclides Reckziegel as blue and yellow macaws flew over a solid forest canopy that echoed with the growls of howler monkeys.