Home on the range.

A few years ago, some U.S. researchers--bent on making a point about the West and its dead and dying landscape--took marginal desert grazing land and let it lie fallow. Soon, wild grasses sprouted where there had been rocks and dust. A short. Lime later animals, mostly tiny rodents and lizards, returned. What the researchers found was an active ecosystem in place of dead, dry desert. Constant grazing had been the problem all along.

The experiment makes two interesting points: Leaving land alone has value, clearly to small animals and plants, and that the earth is forgiving. Dam the rivers, let cattle roam and generally mismanage a range and, given time, it can recover. Speaking to a group recently, I was asked if Brazil should be allowed to develop parts of its Amazonian rainforest, something environmentalists there accuse the Lula government of getting ready to okay.

Brazilians are absolutely right to consider the land under their feet a resource for supporting the country's vast and, in many parts, underfed population. Certainly, the U.S. government has had no qualms about letting its ranchers run cattle over public land for decades. It has kept U.S. beef prices low and helped politically connected ranchers get rich. Dams across the western U.S. slates means backyards in Los Angeles stay green. It's bad policy, but good politics.

Of course, Brazil can't allow to happen to the Amazon what has happened to the western United States. Why? Just because the richest nation in the world got that way by ruining its countryside doesn't mean whacking down trees and shutting off rivers makes any sense. Lula understands that, and his government seems to be ready to talk compromise with the greens. That's good policy, and even better politics.

Greg Brown 

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PS. Italy's Parmalat, now utterly bankrupt, will struggle to keep its highly profitable Latin American assets. What's for sale? Probably everything. (Page 40)