Nature World: Illegal burning clears brush and small trees in order to clear land for agriculture in an already deforested section of Amazon rainforest on June 11, 2012 in Para state, Brazil. Although deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is down 80 percent since 2004, environmentalists fear recent changes to the Forest Code will lead to further destruction. Around 20 percent of the rainforest has already been destroyed.
Threats to the Amazon rainforest are more wide-ranging than people realize, revealed a...