A row has blown up in Brazil over a reduction in how much area rural landholders in one part of the Amazon have to replant, with environmental activists slamming what they said amounts to an "amnesty."
"This move is an amnesty, a pardon for those who engaged in deforestation and who haven't replanted," the country campaign director for Greenpeace, Sergio Leitao, told AFP.
The dispute comes from an interpretation of the forestry law, which normally requires landowners in the Amazon to preserve or reforest 80 percent of their properties -- but which is reduced to just 50 percent in areas considered "degraded."
The measure was being applied to 11,667 square kilometers (4,500 square miles) of forest along a Brazilian national highway, the BR-163, which cuts through the Amazon states of Mato Grosso and Para -- two regions severely hit by deforestation.
There, owners will only be obliged to reforest half their land, Para authorities ...