THE Amazon, which today represents a quarter of the planet’s forests and is one of its most diverse reserves of plants and animals, could disappear within the next 50 years, environmental pressure group Greenpeace warned on Tuesday. At the current rate of destruction, the Amazon will be reduced in 50 years time to scattered clumps of trees, warned Paulo Adario, the Brazilian head of Greenpeace’s international campaign against deforestation. ”Over four and a half centuries, from 1500 to around 1970, only one percent of the Amazon rainforest was destroyed. In the three decades since, 590 000 square metres of forest have been chopped down. ”That’s 15% of the Amazon — an area bigger than France,” Adario told a news conference. An area of about the same size was being exploited illegally, he added. Adario claimed that mafia groups were buying illegally chopped mahogany – a wood much prized by French importers – from the Kayapo Indians in the eastern part of the rainforest for $25 per square metre and selling it to foreign timber importers for $1 100 per square metre. – Sapa-AFP