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ABOUT THE AMAZON: Samauma: The queen of the forest When sailing in remotes areas of the Amazon the basic landscape is a constant green carpet interrupted here and there by small typical houses. However, the forest has wounds that may not be visible from the river, but are so deep that hundreds of years won’t be enough time to heal them. The giants of the forest, the Samaumas, are being killed. And with them, bits of this planet’s history. The Samaumas are trees that can reach 30 metres in height and 3 metres in the diameter. They stand in the varzea (the forest that floods during the wet season), beautiful, magical, like an ancient lady watching out for her children. Considered sacred by some indigenous peoples and local communities as rubber tappers, the Samaumas are known in the Jurua river basin as the queens of the forest due to their magnitude. Mr. Joaquim Cunha, 66 years old, rubber tapper, caresses a Samauma he says is 200 years old. It is located some 2 km away from his house at the Mandioca village. He looks up where the branches stop the sunrays to touch the ground and smiles, sadly. “I am worried because if things continue this way, my grandchildren won’t have the chance to see a tree like this one. Experienced as he is, he has reason to be worried. Samauma timber is used by the logging industry to produce plywood. It’s not hardwood destined for fine furniture, but hundred-year-old trees that end up in construction yards. A Greenpeace team found a huge Samauma tree, of about 40 cubic metres, cut and left behind on the east bank of the Jurua river. The loggers cut the tree hoping that the water level would have been high enough to pull it to the river. It didn’t happen. Now a treasure of nature lay dead in the forest, destined to rotten in that very same place. Not to mention that up on its the fall, it damaged at least 30 other trees, opening a clearance in a pristine forest area. Moreover, it was illegally cut, as the area has no forest management plan approved, according to IBAMA (Brazilian Environmental Agency) records. It is a clear, powerful portrait of forest destruction. The trees that are taken to the river end up forming log rafts that will be tugged downstream to feed big companies based in the logging poles of Manaus and Itacoatiara, like the raft of about 100 Samauma logs (found by the Greenpeace team in the same day (see headlines)). Illegal logging operations are destroying the Amazon. More than that, they are putting an end to centuries and centuries of evolution, beauty and tradition.   More 'About the Amazon' Acai - The Forest's Milk About Para Encontro das Aguas (Meeting of the Waters)