Environmental Questions Dog Brazil's Farming Boom

The emergence of Brazil as an agricultural source for a steadily expanding world population provides unique opportunities to learn from our tendancy to plunder the earth.Because the Amazon rainforest ,Mato Grosso ,Parana region is the refuge of so many species of avian ,mammal,reptile,amphibian life all dependent on water,the source from which all of life began-I am very much concerned that the rapid growth of the region may pressure Brazil to yield to short sighted profit driven development of these areas.The mad dash to prospect for gold using the most toxic methods of extraction such as mercury is one of the most recent examples.Advances in methods of protecting wildlife as well as human consumers of food products harvested in proximity to contaminated water sources must anticipate such demands on the ecosytem .