Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has dropped to its lowest level in 24 years, the Government said today.

Satellite imagery showed that 4,656 sq km of the Amazon were deforested between August 2011 and July 2012, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said a news conference.

That’s 27 per cent less than the 6,418 sq km deforested a year earlier. The margin of error is 10 percentage points.

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research said the deforestation level is the lowest since it started measuring the destruction of the rainforest in 1988.

Sixty-three per cent of the rainforest’s 6.1 million sq km are in Brazil.

The space institute said the latest figures show that Brazil is close to its 2020 target of reducing deforestation by 80 per cent from 1990 levels. Through July 2012 deforestation dropped by 76.26 per cent.

George Pinto a director of Ibama, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, told presspersons that better enforcement of environmental laws and improved surveillance technology are behind the drop in deforestation levels.

Pinto said in the 12-month period a total of 2,000 square meters of illegally felled timber were seized by Government agents. The impounded lumber is sold in auctions and the money obtained is invested in environmental preservation programmes.

Environment Minister Teixeira said starting next year Brazil will start using satellite monitoring technology to detect illegal logging and slash-and-burn activity and issue fines.

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