Deforestation Triples In Ecuador YOY During First 3 Months Of 2013
Data released this week by Terra-i, a collaborative mapping initiative, shows that deforestation in Ecuador for the first three months of 2013 was pacing more than 300 percent ahead of last year's rate. The report comes shortly after Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa killed off a proposed plan to prohibit oil drilling in Yasuni National Park in exchange for payments equivalent to half the value of the park's unexploited oil reserves.
Terra-i, a collaboration between the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the School of Business and Engineering (HEIG-VD) in Switzerland and King’s College London (KCL), uses NASA satellite data to detect deforestation in Latin America on 16-day basis. The system shows that between Jan 1 and Mar 7 this year, some 9,075 ha of Ecuador's forests were cleared. By comparison, 2,931 ha of forest were chopped down during the year-earlier period.
Between January and March 2013, two-thirds of the loss occurred within the country's tropical lowland forests, the most carbon-dense and species-rich ecosystem in the country. Nearly 5,000 hectares of forest was cleared in the region where Yasuni National Park is located.
Yasuni was the centerpiece of an ambitious — and controversial — project presented by Correa to the U.N. in 2007. The plan called for a ban on oil extraction in the park in exchange for payments to leave the crude in the ground. Correa had sought $3.6 billion in contributions — equivalent to roughly half the value of the 846 million barrels of oil estimated to lie under the rainforest reserve — but managed to raise only $13 million in deposits (some $330 million was pledged). Contributions came mostly from private donors and the U.N.
EDIT
http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0903-ecuador-deforestation.html