Part 1
In the late 1960s, the Brazilian government decided that it preferred cows to trees. So new legislation was used to encourage the farmers to cut down vast tracts of the Amazon rain forests - at the rate of about two-and-a-half million acres a year. As well as killing off many rare species of plant, are the Brazilians attacking what were once called the 'world's lungs' -one of the major sources of oxygen for the southern hemisphere?
In the first of two programmes, Anthony Smith reports from the cattle farms of Brazil, and asks: What Has Happened to the Forests'
Producer GEOFF DEEHAN
(Part 2 next Thursday)