Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this month signed a law intended to slow deforestation by setting up a logging-concession system on public lands. And in an earlier forest-protection step, Lula in February created eight new reserves in the Amazon region covering 15.8 million acres (6.4 million has), an area the size of West Virginia. The most closely watched of the two moves was the March 2 signing of the forest-protection law (No. 11,284). The law allows the government to sell concessions to private companies for the environmentally sustainable logging of public forests. Government officials say illegal logging, slash-and-burn agriculture and other illicit Amazon land clearing will be discouraged because the private timber companies will have an economic stake... [Log in to read more]