The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil inherited, in its National Forest Program, a formidable proposal to increase the area designated to national forests (Flonas) in the Amazon from eight to 50 million hectares by the year 2010. This objective is...

Local management systems are generally regarded as traditional systems developed over generations. However, in the Brazilian Amazon, as in many other regions, community or collective management is a response to more recent changes in the exploitation of local...

Leaf‐cutting ants (Atta spp.) often increase in abundance following deforestation and may have an important effect on forest succession on abandoned land. In this study, we evaluated the effects of leaf‐cutting ant (Atta sexdens) activity on physical and chemical...

In their Policy Forum "National forests in the Amazon” (30 Aug., p. 1478), A. Veríssimo et al. seem assured that a new system of national forests will solve the problems of uncontrolled forest exploitation in the Brazilian Amazon. Unfortunately, we are far less...