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Ed's Frog MessageBlog Archive17th June 2010 - Ricky Gervais and the Bible... 20th May 2010 - Caught with our pants down 15th April 2010 - How dangerous are jaguars really? 18th March 2010 - A Hungry Anaconda? 4th March 2010 - Ed's Rotten Arm 18th February 2010 - Paddling across the 'Meeting of the Waters' 4th February 2010 - Damming the Amazon 21st January 2010 - Dedication 7th January 2010 - Swamp Donkey 17th December 2009 - A Little Bit Scared 3rd December 2009 - Scratched and Confused 19th November 2009 - Oil Under the Jungle 29th October 2009 - Watch out for the CAIMAN! 15th October 2009 - On our own in the jungle 1st October 2009 - Trench Warfare 17th September 2009 - The Island of Food 3rd September 2009 - Food Dreams 27th August 2009 - Heavy packs and the search for fish
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4th February 2010 - Damming the AmazonWhilst Cho and I have been resting and repairing our kit in the small town of Itapiranga, Brazil's government has given the go-ahead to build a HUGE dam in the Amazon rainforest. The dam will be built downstream of where we are now in the Brazilian state of Para. The following information is taken from BBC and Times sources:
The Belo Monte dam project is on the Xingu river, an Amazon tributary. The rock star Sting spoke up against the plan with tribal leaders, and urged the Government to consider the impact of deforestation on greenhouse gas levels and global warming. The dam will be the third-largest in the world and could provide electricity to 23 million homes! Some people say that the flooding of 500 sq km of rainforest will damage fish stocks and wildlife and force indigenous peoples from their land. The Environment Minister in Brazil, said on Monday that the land flooded would be a fraction of the 5,000 sq km originally planned. “The environmental impact has been weighed up, calculated and reduced,” he said. “Not one Indian on indigenous land will be displaced."
Indian groups complain that they were not properly consulted over the project, which Megaron Tuxucumarrae, a chief of the Kayapo tribe, said would destroy the environment that his people had taken care of for generations. “We are opposed to dams on the Xingu, and will fight to protect our river,” he said. Whichever company wins the contract will have to spend $803million on reducing the impact and resettling about 12,000 people. Brazil´s government says hydro-electric plants are a vital way to ensure electricity supplies over the next decade - and at least 70 dams are said to be planned for the Amazon region. This would change the face of the Amazon for ever. Extracts taken from articles by Gary Duffy (BBC News, Sao Paulo) and Hannah Strange (Timesonline). Join us on 18th February for the next entry and don't forget to check out our new Question of the Week video - and send in your questions to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . |
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Ed
Stafford is an explorer. Like Captain Scott of the Antarctic and Sir
Ranulph Fiennes before him, he has a passion for discovering and
learning about the vast planet that we all live on. Today, so many of
the great expeditions have already been done by explorers of the past.
There are no longer many things that people can do and say, "I was the
first person in the world to do that!" 
