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Reuters reports that large areas of the Amazon will be auctioned off to private timber companies and cooperatives to reduce illegal logging.
Private companies will be granted logging concessions for nearly 1 million hectares (2.47 million) by year-end. Within 4 to 5 years, nearly 11 million hectares (27 million acres), about the area of Virginia will be under private management.
Officials claim that concessions establish more state control in the lawless Amazon region, where settlers and speculators often illegally occupied public lands while generating jobs and revenues.
ALSO, By Brian Ellsworth, a report on officials testing implanting microchips in a small pilot project.
The chips allow land owners to distinguish their wood from that acquired through illegal logging that each year destroys the forest. "People talk a lot these days about wood coming from sustainable forestry practices -- this is a system that can prove it," said Paulo Borges, of the organization Acao Verde, or Green Action.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69A1XX20101011
