Amazon Rainforest 30 Years on

It's happened to all of us. You return to a beloved location -- and it isn't quite as you remembered. But even taking that into consideration, Sue Branford got a big shock recently when she returned to what was once a small community in the Brazilian rainforest.

It's estimated that last year alone twenty-six thousand square kilometres of trees were felled -- an area almost the size of Belgium! Sue first visited the region three decades ago. Today it's almost unrecognisable...

It's a strange sensation returning to a place you haven't visited for 30 years. And it's even stranger if everything has changed out of all recognition.

I first went to the Amazon basin in 1974. At that time it was a real wild-west. The generals then ruling Brazil had decided, in what later proved to be a dangerous simplification, that the Amazon basin was empty. It was time, they said, to occupy it. So they set about building a network of roads and encouraging loggers and cattle companies to move in.

So there I was in 1974, on one of my first journalist assignments, finding out what was going on. I'd never been to the Amazon before and I was overwhelmed by it all. The beauty of the forest was breathtaking. There were trees so huge that it would have taken ten men with outstretched arms to encircle their trunks. Turtles basked in the sun on the white sand dunes that lined the rivers.

But, along with this natural beauty, was man-made conflict. When the loggers and cattle companies arrived, they found peasant families living in parts of the forest. As well as fishing, hunting and collecting Brazil nuts, they were clearing small plots of land to grow food. The companies sent in gunmen to deal with them. Day after day I met traumatised peasants who'd been forcibly evicted. On another occasion I saw a group of disoriented, emaciated Amerindians, begging for food by the side of the road.

For a few days I travelled in a lorry along one of the half-finished roads. One afternoon, after hours of dense forest, we stopped at a tiny hamlet. It was called Redencao, Redemption. And there among the wooden shacks, with their roofs made of palm leaves, was a bar selling ice-cream. The owner, an eccentric Italian, had somehow managed to bring an ice-cream maker into this remote region. The machine was fuelled by diesel, which was in short supply, so it often lay idle.

译文：

这样的事情我们所有人都遭遇过。当你回到一处你所热爱的地方时，结果却发现与你记忆中的景象大相径庭。休·布兰福最近返回到了巴西雨林里她曾经去过的一个小村落，即便早做好了心理准备，但她还是受到了很大的震惊。

据估计仅去年一年就有两万六千平方公里的树木被砍伐，面积几乎相当于一个比利时那么大！休第一次到这个地区是30年前，但今天她几乎完全认不出来了。

回到你已经三十年没有踏足的地方会有一种奇怪的感觉，而如果所有的东西都变得完全无法辨认了，这种感觉就更为奇怪了。

我是1974年第一次到亚马逊盆地的，当时这里是西部一处真正的荒野之地。当时巴西的统治者们做出决定，认为亚马逊盆地是块空地，而随后的时间则证明了这个决定过于简单化，后果是危险的。他们当时认为是占领这块盆地的时候了。因此开始建造道路网，并鼓励伐木工人和畜牧业公司搬迁进去。

因此我于1974年到了那，这是我首次记者任务之一，我要关注事态的进展。我以前从来没有到过亚马逊，结果我被它完全征服了。树林美丽得让人窒息。有的树非常巨大，需要十个男子张开手臂才能围着树干绕成一圈。海龟们在河流沿线的白色沙丘上惬意地晒着太阳。

但是这么美丽的自然景观，却发生了人为的冲突。当伐木工和畜牧业公司来到这里时，他们发现了在森林的部分地方生活着一些农民家庭，他们除了捕鱼、打猎和采集巴西坚果以外，还开垦了小块的土地种植粮食。公司派来了枪手进行干涉。我每天都能看到受伤的农民，他们遭到了强行驱逐。还有一次我看到了一群迷失了方向的印第安人，他们非常憔悴，站在路边乞讨食物。

我坐在一辆卡车里沿着一条刚修完一半的道路一连走了几天。有天下午我们沿着茂密的森林走了几个小时之后，停在了一个名叫“救赎”的小村庄里。在棕榈树叶作为屋顶的小木屋之间有家卖冰激淋的酒吧。酒吧的主人是位古怪的意大利人，他不知用了什么方法将一台制作冰激淋的机器弄到了这个边远的地区。这台机器是烧柴油的，但是由于缺少柴油，所以机器常常处于闲置状态。