Greenpeace against cattle: "The steak is at the expense of the destruction of the forest"

80% of deforestation in Argentina is concentrated in four provinces in the Chaco region: Santiago del Estero, Salta, Chaco and Formosa, where 113,000 hectares were lost last year, Greenpeace warned today. in a report in which he blamed the "uncontrolled expansion of the livestock sector".

The book warned that "Argentine steak arrives at the table of consumers of the world at the cost of the destruction of the forests of Gran Chaco and the extinction of its king: yaguareté", one of the rare species of the Argentine fauna declared as a national natural monument by the law n ° 25 463.

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The extinction of yaguarete – the largest feline of America and the third in the world – is another of the risks put on guard by the investigation "The Sacrifice of the Forests of Gran Chaco", which the Environmental organization has revealed today.

He explains that "the uncontrolled expansion of the livestock industry is generating a historic crime on a single site: the Gran Chaco, the second largest forest ecosystem in North America. South, after the Amazon ".

According to the report, the importance of this space lies in the fact that there are 3,400 species of plants, 500 species of birds, 150 mammals, 120 reptiles, 100 amphibians and more than four million residents, about 8% of whom are natives, who depend on the forest for food, water, wood and medicine.

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"80% of clearings are concentrated in the Chaco region, in the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Salta, Chaco and Formosa, where the last five years of intensive livestock deforestation have more than doubled compared to agriculture" he warned. the Greenpeace report.

With this in mind, the organization has held "the cattle industry" responsible for "the disappearance of the Chaco forests and almost all their species" with their "big bulldozers".

"On this floor, now satin, they install their cows after planting pasture for the fattening of a product that will then be exported and will end up in the gondola of a supermarket", has-it- he declares.

On the Yaguarties of Gran Chaco, he said that they depended on very large territories (from 400 to 2,900 square kilometers) and added that "their decline was putting the species on the verge of disappearing in the region. ".

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He also pointed out that "between 1985 and 2013, more than 20% of the Chaco forest (142 000 km 2) was converted to pastures and farmland, thus reducing their biodiversity, especially that of the largest mammals. ".

The organization paid attention to large refrigerators in Argentina that export beef to large supermarkets and wholesalers in Europe.

Israel, to which he asked "to adopt a" zero deforestation policy "and asked that, if necessary, he implement it seriously".

"This means ensuring that its production system and suppliers do not cause deforestation and do not respect the rights of indigenous peoples," he said.

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The report also warned about the implementation of the Mercosur-European Union agreement, stating that "the demand for Argentine beef will increase, the export activities of large refrigerators will be more profitable and the pressure on the forests will increase ".

"The ambitious plans to increase livestock in the northern provinces of Argentina (10 million additional cows) put 10 million hectares of forest at risk," he said.

In this sense, he predicted that "its degradation, deforestation and fragmentation will leave virtually no chance of survival for the last 20 Yaguarties of the Chaco region", he concluded that this situation should be avoided in time .

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