Greeny News

Is aborted as the Natural History Museum 's Expedition, is the area that converted to ranch land faster than ever before

The Natural History Museum 's ill-fated expedition to chart the diversity of South America' s "Green Hell" - the Chaco - was officially abandoned. That was always likely after human rights groups protested that the researchers could stumble into previously uncontacted tribes, but it marks the end not one sorry, costly consequence has seen the maintenance and trampled the human rights violators.

But what in this unbearably hot, ecologically fragile, desert-thorn infested insects has happened in the past year? The answer is the Chaco - which extends across Argentina and Paraguay - is now being torn up and converted to US-style ranch land by bulldozers even faster than it was before, and the few Indians who live there, never felt more threatened. Brazilian ranchers were possible, by Paraguayan laws, the people attracted 70% of the trees, the rush to lead the local Mennonites to buy land, grow piling across the borders to soy and corn.

Now the Saudis have made a classic "land grab" who pulled a large area of ??the Chaco destroy neighboring Argentina. This year, announced the huge Al-Khorayef conglomerate was to spend $ 400 million "Irrigation and development" almost 200,000 hectares to grow food for Saudi Arabia. This falls under the Saudi government 's national food security plan that sees off the kingdom of cereals over the next seven years to save their dwindling water supplies. Saudi companies have been buying billions of dollars of land all over the world and are now investing in Ethiopia, Sudan, India, Uruguay and elsewhere.

The net result of the NHM episode is rather sad. The museum has gone, probably never to return. Iniciativa Amotiocodie, the small human rights organisation that tried to alert the world to the plight of the Ayoreo in the Chaco, faces draconian penalties by the state, and leaders of the Ayoreo have now written to the UN to complain about a Brazilian company which has destroyed much of their land.