Drama in the Amazon : Ecology: Preventing the destruction of the Earth’s tropical rain forests is a trend that is gathering steam among environmentalists.

Since the searchlights started snapping on all over the environment, no issue has become more visible than the destruction of the world’s tropical rain forests.

In the last four decades, more than half the forests in Amazonia, West Africa and Southeast Asia have quietly been eradicated, making room for cattle ranching, logging, hydroelectric projects, and, most recently, a Wild West-style rampage of gold miners, bringing mercury contamination to the jungle’s rivers and food chain.

Then, suddenly, 1989 became the year of the rain forest. It began last December with the murder of Chico Mendes, leader of the rubber tappers’ union in the Brazilian state of Acre who became an instant eco-martyr in the Dian Fossey mode, and it will come full circle in January with a gala Hollywood fund-raiser on the lawn of Ted and Susie Field’s Bel-Air estate.

In between, there has been a bizarre blitzkrieg of cultural exchange, with Amazonian tribal chiefs working the North American power network in search of aid, and a who’s who of gringos taking Brazilian jungle junkets to view the tragedy firsthand.

From the hipper-than-hip to biologists buried deep in their jungle labs, society has jumped on the bandwagon, creating a rain forest chic that’s become the ultimate symbol of the save-the-environment movement.

Consider a portion of the year’s agenda:

* Last spring, Sting and Brazilian Kayapo Indian Chief Raoni, a warrior whose lower lip is distended with a saucer-size disk, went on a whirlwind fund-raising tour, meeting the Pope, French President Francois Mitterrand and Prince Charles and appearing on the Phil Donohue Show.

* Art star Kenny Scharf teamed up with Madonna to throw a “Don’t Bungle the Jungle” celebrity bash at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in May.

* Three American books (and a host of books from other countries) were started on Chico Mendes’ murder, and a stampede begun to cut companion movie deals.

* Two new Los Angeles-based groups--EMA (the Environmental Media Assn.) and ECO (the Earth Communications Office)--began mobilizing the entertainment community to speak out on environmental concerns, including the rain forest.

* The third annual World Rain Forest Week, which ended today, was celebrated with fund-raising rock concerts around the country.

* Finally, in September the rain forest achieved mainstream cause celebre status, making the cover of Time magazine.

Undeniably, the appeal of the rain forest is potent; it encompasses drama, adventure, exotica--pink river dolphins, mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds, towering cathedral canopies of green, charred tree stumps left like tombstones on slash-and-burn terrain, uncorrupted native tribes, people driven from their land, and the dark, brutal killing of an old-fashioned hero.

“It’s a powerful visual image,” says Los Angeles public-relations executive Josh Baran, whose firm specializes in environmental campaigns.

“You can feel it. You can smell it. You can see it in your mind. And it fills you with sorrow and dread,”

Enthuses ECO’s organizer, Bonnie Reiss, a former entertainment lawyer, “People in their gut know there’s a real, real, real, real, real credible threat out there.”

Half the species of animals and plants on earth live in the rain forests, yet every second an area the size of a football field disappears. Environmental groups say that in 50 years there will be no more rain forest left, anywhere, ever.

Conveniently, however, the destruction is occurring down there, far from hometown constituencies, making it a safe issue for even the most conservative politicians to support.

“It’s an easy issue to promote,” says Randy Hayes, the 39-year-old founder of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, the nation’s major political advocacy group.

By using the rain forest as “a sexy symbol,” says Hayes, “we’ve created a trendiness. Now we have to orchestrate that into a long-term movement.”

Certainly, there is no more impressive promotional tool than an actual trip to the lush Amazon forest itself. Two months ago, ECO’s Reiss did just that, taking 20 entertainment powers armed with press packets on a week-long trek to the Brazilian jungles.

“I took these people on a pilgrimage to the environmental Holy Land,” says Reiss with a missionary’s fervor. For some, a spiritual uplifting did take place.

“I was transformed,” says former “Three’s Company” star John Ritter. “It was like what church was supposed to be for me. But I never really got it in organized religion.”

The host for the stars was scientist Thomas Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institute, a man who wears the brim of his safari hat jauntily whipped up and carries a passport packed like an accordion with visas. Viewed by many as the prime force in saving the rain forest, Lovejoy has been studying the Brazilian Amazon for 25 years.

“It was like rattling around in a dark barn with a paper book of matches,” he says of his early efforts to illuminate the issue.

This year, his jungle station, which is about the size of a football infield, has become something of an Amazonian Ritz: about 7% of the U.S. Congress have been guests; two weeks ago Olivia Newton-John checked in, and Robert Redford has inquired about a stay.

Meanwhile, about 1,000 miles southwest, the small river town of Xapuri where Chico Mendes lived has become a jungle mecca for reporters and film crews, rolling down main street in their VW mini-vans. The $2-a-day Hotel Veneza has added gringo-style touches to its breakfast, while the media-beseiged rubber tappers have begun charging admission fees for access to the area where Mendes grew up.

‘Sour Attitude’

According to Andrew Revkin, a senior editor at Discover magazine who is back from researching a book on Mendes, the prospect of movie-deal money has “created a sour attitude in town.”

Among events roiling emotions is New Yorker staff writer Alex Shoumatoff’s sale of rights to his Vanity Fair article on Mendes to Robert Redford for a film to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Shoumatoff did not tell the rubber tappers about the sale or contribute money from it to their union. When he returned for a second visit he found doors slammed against his project.

“It’s a snake pit down there,” he says, adding he plans to make a future contribution (“Who should I make the contribution to?”). “There’s a faction that’s poisoned the image of Robert Redford as an arch-capitalist devil.”

On the other hand, Mendes’ widow has given exclusive cooperation to Brazilian novelist Marcio Souza, reportedly without the consent of the Chico Mendes Foundation, a coalition of rubber tappers, environmentalists and family members.

Souza’s book rights were sold last month for nearly $1 million to Peter Guber and Jon Peters, producers of the summer’s blockbusters, “Batman” and “Rain Man.” In the face of media madness, Revkin contends, serious questions about the killing of Mendes remain unattended.

Meanwhile, north of the Equator, the rain forest rage has spread through a varied life-style environment of latter-day hippies, yuppies and celebrity swells. On the new clubs-with-a-conscious scene, New York’s downtown Wetlands Preserves opened last February with a disco plus Earth station resource center.

“The younger kids are looking for a meaningful place to hang out,” says the center’s director, Russ Weis, an ex-commodities trader on Wall Street. “Here you feel like you’re plugging into the planet.”

Kenny Scharf, who with his Brazilian wife has watched the country’s coastal forest burn from their beach house in Bahia, plans to sell T-shirts emblazoned with his art.

“This cause has to be totally popular,” he says.

As for his part, Hayes and his Rainforest Action Network are beginning to point to political victories. After a boycott three years ago, Burger King, McDonald’s and Hardy’s say they’ve sworn off importing rain forest beef to make their burgers.

This month, Scott Paper Co. withdrew from a project to cut down two million acres in Indonesia and relocate 40,000 tribal people to establish a eucalyptus tree farm that would supply paper towels and toilet paper to Japan. The decision followed a full-page ad Hayes placed in the New York Times, proclaiming: “It won’t be you but these eight men who control the fate of your children.” Among the eight was Scott Paper’s chief executive officer.

A long-term resolution to the problems of the continuing devastation is, however, as complex as the issue itself.

For Lovejoy, the first step is to prevent incursions into the forest. “Once you have access you have vulnerability. The solution for the moment is not to provide new access,” he says.

To provide incentives, Lovejoy wants to cancel the national debts of rain-forest countries in exchange for the channeling of these funds into conservation projects.

But while environmentalists lobby and governments negotiate, the rain-forest tribes are left to devise their own methods of defense.

Last summer, a remote people in Ecuador registered their discontent at prospective encroachment by white people in a way power-brokers understand.

Conoco--with World Bank aid and Ecuadorian government cooperation--planned to bulldoze a road through the uncharted land. To make contact with the natives, officials dropped a priest and a nun into the jungle by helicopter.

When the bodies of the would-be missionaries were found, they had been pierced by spears 62 times.