By Philip M. Fearnside Brazil’s Amazon deforestation has traditionally been primarily in the “arc of deforestation” along the southern and eastern edges of the forest, but highways connecting this arc, such as the BR-163 (Santarém-Cuiabá) highway, are allowing this destruction to expand to rainforest areas to the north. Of particular concern at the present time is the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway that would facilitate the movement of deforestation actors and processes to Manaus, in the relatively intact central Amazon, to all areas in the northern Amazon that are already connected by ro…
