The health of the Amazon is a worldwide issue, thanks partly to environmental campaigners who sounded the alarm in the 1970s and '80s about deforestation.

Now it seems the original message was incomplete.

Where is the desert?
Seventeen per cent of the Amazon rainforest has been cleared to make space for settlements, ranching cattle and growing crops.

Environmentalists have long warned that rainforest soil is vulnerable to nutrient loss and erosion if established vegetation goes. A trip to the region rapidly proves however that the area is not turning into desert, as had been predicted.

Instead, the cleared land is ideal for modern agriculture, if fertilisers are used to replace lost nutrients.

Greenpeace representative Paulo Adario admits that some of the early wake up calls overstated the problem but argues doing so was necessary to grab world attention.

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Where are the cattle?
They are not necessarily in Brazil. Cleared rainforest now supports agriculture the world over.

Early concerns about exploitation of the Amazon focused on tree logging and cattle ranching. The threat to the Amazon from humans' taste for meat is complicated by Brazilian farmers turning to growing soya beans.

Soya is an important component in animal feed. Birds, mammals and fish farmed anywhere in the world may eat Amazonian soya. It's an extra economic driver encouraging clearance of native forest.

Even concerned vegans should take care, though:

• Soya oil accounts for nearly a quarter of all international trade in oils and fats
• Soya flour and protein are ingredients in countless foods
• Soya oil can be used to make chemicals, including 'eco-friendly' detergents and biodegradable plastics

People in developed nations are consuming the Amazon, perhaps without even realising.

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Where are the police?
The Brazilian government owns 70% of the remaining rainforest area and over 30% of that land is protected from clearance and development. But protection sometimes exists in name only.

IBAMA, The Brazilian environmental enforcement agency, has so few staff that an area the size of France is looked after by 50 agents. That situation is not helped by many countries diverting aid from the Amazon to other parts of the world. The UK government's Department for International Development has no plans to support new programmes for the conservation of the rainforest in Brazil.

The Brazilian government certainly cares about the plight of the forest. But it knows it must care too about its economy and its people. Small farmers already feel excluded by environmental protection laws that can evict them from land they have farmed for years.

As road links across the Amazon region improve, legal and illegal exploitation of the rainforest is sure to continue apace.

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