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Indeed. And this is because lumber export bans made them unable to trade extremely precious resources like Mahogany.

So they did the obvious thing that any impoverished, developing country would do and burned it down for farmland and agriculture.

This article could be entitled: "Unintended consequences: why UN export bans are the key driver of deforestation for the last 50 years."

If they could export mahogany, then they’d be cutting the rainforest down to export mahogany. What is your point?

There is a chance they might replant them so that they could harvest it again in 30-50 years while a switch to farmland is pretty permanent.

Wrong. This is happening at alarming rates now due to corrupt government cutting investment on policing the forests and signaling that environmental criminals won’t be prosecuted. Brazil was just as poor 10 and 20 years ago and deforestation levels weren’t as high.

How much Brazilian beef is in a US Big Mac/Whopper?

in april they cleared more rainforest than any other month over the past 7 years (that’s when they started tracking)