SAO PAULO – A study by environmental watchdog agencies says deforestation in the Amazon destroyed an area almost as big as the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2010.
The study by the Amazon Information Network was released Tuesday in Bolivia.
The network says in a statement that close to 93,000 square miles (240,000 square kilometers) of Amazon rainforest were devastated in the 10-year period studied.
It says that the main culprits are illegal logging, the construction of highways, mining, farming and ranching and the construction of hydroelectric dams.
The network is composed of 11 environmental watchdog organizations in eight South American countries and French Guiana, all of which share the vast Amazon rainforest.
Sixty-three percent of the rainforest's 2.4 million square miles (6.1 million square kilometers) are in Brazil.
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