Evolution and Events of the Amazon Raiforest:
- 1864 steamboats start accessing the Amazon River
- 1888 Rubber boom begins in earnest with John Boyd Dunlop’s invention of the pneumatic tire
- 1967 Cattle Ranching begins to take place in Amazon Raiforest
- 1970 Transamazon Highway construction begun by the military government, initiating the modern era of deforestation
- 1985 Migration for jobs in the Amazon building railroads
- 1994 Deforestation increases
- 2001 Deforestation control program in Mato Grosso shows that clearing can be controlled when political will is present. Program effectively ends with 2002 election of Brazil’s largest soybean entrepereneur as governor of the state
- 1998 Great Roraima Fire: during the El Niño drought an estimated 1.1-1.3 million hectares of tropical forest burned in Brazil’s far-northern state of Roraima
- 2005 Dorothy Stang is assassinated in Anapú, Pará. American nun who defended small farmers and environmental causes. Her assassination by gunslingers hired by ranchers provided the impetus for the Ministry of the Environment to create a series of protected areas in Pará and to launch a deforestation repression campaign
- Widespread drought in the Amazon in 2005 and 2010
- 2013 Amazon rainforest approved for oil drilling
- Rainforests once covered 14% of the Earth surface and now they cover a mere 6%
http://www.xtimeline.com/timeline/Amazon-Deforestation-Timeline