The Guyana shield has been forged. That’s the name given to the largest uninterrupted stretch of protected rainforest anywhere on Earth and it was completed on Monday when the governor of the Brazilian state of Pará announced, after six years of discussions, legal protection for 15 million hectares of Amazonian rainforest. “This is one of the major conservation announcements of recent decades,” said José Maria Cardoso da Silva, of the Brazilian arm of the not-for-profit Conservation International.
The seven newly protected zones include two which together support 54 per cent of all Amazonian animal and plant species. They are flanked…
