Can Forests Be More Profitable Than Beef?

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By Manuela Andreoni, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: The residents of Maracaçumé, an impoverished town on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, are mystified by the company that recently bought the biggest ranch in the region. How can it possibly make money by planting trees, which executives say they’ll never cut down, on pastureland where cattle have been grazing for decades? ...The new company ...is a forest restoration business called Re.green. Its aim, along with a handful of other companies, is to create a whole new industry that can make standing trees, which store planet-warming carbon, more lucrative than the world’s biggest driver of deforestation: cattle ranching. ...About a fifth of the great rainforest is already gone. And scientist warn that rising global temperatures could push the entire ecosystem, a trove of biodiversity and a crucial regulator of the world’s climate, to collapse in the coming decades unless deforestation is halted and an area the size of Germany is restored. ...Re.green plans to restore native trees in deforested areas and sell credits that correspond to the carbon they lock away. ...many conservationists worry that carbon credits could easily be abused by companies that want to appear environmentally conscious while sticking with fossil fuels. ...A brutal drought fueled by climate change and deforestation has recently dried out much of the grass that ranchers there use as feed. And, after decades of pounding by hooves, millions of acres across the region have become so degraded they can’t nourish much of anything. ...fewer than half of the ranches registered with the city have any cattle on them.... 

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