Loggers face Indian rights group accusations
Loggers in Brazil are razing forest dangerously close to where government anthropologists detected traces of an isolated Amazon tribe, despite a judge’s order to stay away from the area, an Indian rights group said yesterday.
The Catholic Church’s Indigenous Missionary Council said logging operations were threatening the so-called Rio Pardo Indians in midwestern Mato Grosso state, 1,250 miles northwest of Sao Paulo, Council spokeswoman Priscila Carvalho said.
In May, a judge banned loggers from the area and restored federal protection for the few remaining members of the largely “uncontacted Indians”.
Anthropologists with the Brazilian Indian Bureau first detected traces of the tribe in 1998 in a densely-jungled area of Mato Grosso.
Little is known about the Rio Pardo Indians except that they probably are hunter-gathers. Anthropologists estimate there may be as many as 50 members of the tribe and that their numbers appear to be dwindling.
About 700,000 Indians live in Brazil, mostly in the Amazon region.
