Brazil Creates Forest Reserves After Nun’s Slaying

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered the creation of two massive Amazonian rain forest reserves Thursday after the killing of an American nun who had fought to protect the jungle.

The decrees will form a reserve of 8.2 million acres and a national park of 1.1 million acres in the state of Para, where 73-year-old Dorothy Stang was shot to death amid a dispute with a powerful rancher.

“We can’t give in to people committing acts of violence,” said Environment Minister Marina Silva, who announced the decrees.

Stang, a naturalized Brazilian originally from Dayton, Ohio, was slain Saturday in a settlement 30 miles from Anapu, which is in Para. A witness said she read from a Bible after being confronted and was then shot six times at close range.

The decrees were announced after more than 60 groups signed a letter to the president demanding action to curb “violence and impunity associated with the illegal occupation of lands and deforestation” in the Amazon, especially in Para, which is nearly twice the size of Texas.

Unless the killing stops, Lula “will risk making history as the champion of rural violence, illegal occupation of public lands and illegal logging,” said the letter, signed by the World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other groups.

Though environmentalists were pleased with the decrees, they said they had lobbied Lula’s administration for similar moves for two years and were dismayed that changes came only after Stang’s death.

“It is sad to see that things that had been in the pipeline for months and years needed a tragic development in order to receive priority,” said Roberto Smeraldi, director of Friends of the Earth in Brazil.

Logging companies and wealthy landowners have steadily pushed deeper into the world’s largest rain forest, which sprawls over 1.6 million square miles and covers more than half of Brazil. Development, logging and farming have destroyed as much as 20% of the forest.

In this eastern Amazon town, helicopters flew in 110 soldiers from the 51st Jungle Infantry Division to join a police search for the men accused of killing Stang. They set up camp near the graveyard where she was buried this week.

The troops were part of a larger operation involving 2,000 soldiers sent in to keep the peace around Para.

At least three other people have been killed in the region since Stang’s slaying.

Police were searching for the two gunmen and for rancher Vitamiro Goncalves Moura, known as Bida, who authorities say ordered the killing.