By Raymond Colitt
Brasilia - The Brazilian government said on Monday the deforestation of the Amazon rain forest fell by 30 percent in the 12 months up to August but it failed to convince environmentalists there would be a lasting effect.
Based on satellite images, the government's space agency Inpe estimated 18 900 square kilometres, an area nearly the size of New Jersey, were razed in the world's largest tropical forest.
"It is still an absolutely scandalous figure," said Paulo Adario, Amazon campaign co-ordinator with Greenpeace.
Damage to the Amazon may be twice as large as previously thought That figure was down from a revised 27200 square kilometres during the same period a year earlier.
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It is the first reduction in the deforestation rate since 2000-2001 and the largest since the 1995-96 period, when the rate fell 37 percent from a high of 29 050 square kilometres.
An Inpe official said the definitive rate for the 2004-05 season would vary by no more than five percent.
The government has been eager to announce a success story after poor third quarter economic growth figures came out last week and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's popularity ratings fell to a low in November. But environmentalists were not so cheered by the figures.
Adario said one-time government policing explained much of the improvement. He cited strong Army presence in the north-eastern Para state after Sister Dorothy Stang, a champion of the poor and the environment, was slain in February by gunmen.
Her assassination drew renewed international attention to the destruction of the Amazon forest.
US and Brazilian forest experts said in October that damage to the Amazon may be twice as large as previously thought due to undetected "selective" logging, where individual trees are picked out of the forest.
They said that taking into account selective logging, damage was between 60 percent and 128 percent higher than the officially deforested area between 1999 and 2002.
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