NARRATION ONE

The Amazon Jungle, the largest tropical rain forest in the world, extends for 2½ million square miles, an area almost the size of the United States of America. Just as impressive as its size is the variety of life it contains, for there are more living species in this jungle than anywhere else in the world.

It would seem that one reason for this wealth of life is the great age of the jungle. Some say sixty million years, some a hundred million years, but all are agreed that much of the Amazon Rain Forest has been in existence for a very tong time, long enough for this great variety to evolve, long enough, too, for some amazing partnerships to develop between its inhabitants

The interdependence of species is normal throughout the world. All forms of life. including man, are part of the tree of life. Without insects to pollinate their flowers, some plants canot reproduce themselves. Without the food provided by smaller animals and by plants. birds and mammals would simply starve. We are all quite familiar with this kind of dependence. In the jungle. though. many species have become totally and exclusively dependent on each othe. One of the most amazing of these stories of total interdependence is the life history of the fig tree and the fig wasp.

NARRATION TWO

All this life, of course. includes the animals and the Amazon is well supplied with animals; some well known, others less so; some attractive. others quite the opposite, and others so strange it is difficult for us to believe that they really do exist.

NARRATION THREE

These people have lived in the Amazon jungle for at least twenty thousand years. There are many distinct tribes, the Yanornamo, the Ticunas and the Auka being just some of them. There are estimated to be between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand Yanomamo in a territory of about sixty thousand square miles in the region of the Venezuelan border to the north west of Brazil.. Among the Amazonian tribes, the Yanomamo are special because they seem to be the oldest of the tribes, because they are the most numerous and because their lifestyle is still practically unchanged. for they live in a remote, almost unexplored area.

The way of life of the Yanornamo may well seem primitive. even savage, to people accustomed to twentieth century western affluence. And, indeed, the way of life is undeniably simple in material terms. It is, though, also undeniable that the Yanomamo are perfectly adapted to the place in which they live. Unlike our civilisation, which uses natural resources with little or no thought for the future, The Yanomamo have a way of life which, undisturbed. could survive for the next twenty thousand years, and more.

NARRATION FOUR

The arid North East
Life expectancy: 30 years.
One child dies every minute.

Sao Paulo
Total population: 17 million.
47% of houses have no piped water.
70% have no drains.
The average wage of a shanty town dweller: 30 pence an hour.
Every week. more and more people come to the city in search of work

NARRATION FIVE

The president was so moved by the hardship he saw that he promised government help to relieve the suffering. People would be given easy credit to help them move away from their poverty. Each family would be given a piece of land and cheap housing along the newly-built Trans-Amazonian Highway.

In the first two years a hundred thousand people left for the Amazon, with great enthusiasm

NARRATION SIX

Their new home is likely to be on the edge of one of the big new roads, such as the Trans-Amazonian Highway. It's an impressive-sounding name. but really it's just a very long single-track dirt road. The farm is probably near one of the frontier towns that have sprung up to cater for the incomers. These towns look for all the world like the wild west towns in the cowboy films, with a general store, a saloon bar. a government land claim office and a few other hastily erected wooden shacks. The towns are always very busy because once the road has been built, the jungle is open to anybody who wants to go there in the hope of a new life or a quick profit

In many of these frontier towns there is continuous conflict between the Indians and the tovnspeople, as the Indians fight to protect the territory they have held for thousands of years, and the townspeople attack to defend themselves against people they see as simply wild and dangerous savages.

So this is what home is now like for the new farmers as they wait patiently for their crops to grow. And they must wait with a certain amount of confidence, for the Amazon gives the appearance of great fertility; the land seems to support a great quantity of life. It is natural to expect that once the trees have been cleared, the land will be very productive.

But in fact, this is not the case for the richness of a jungle is in the trees, not in the soil.

NARRATION 7

Prospectors, also, have their effect on the jungle, for the Amazon holds rich deposits of minerals. The discovery of gold in the north-western border area of Brazil has presented a new and immediate threat to the Yanomamo. Until recently, their remoteness has protected them from disturbance, but the intrusion of gold prospectors onto their lands has brought with it conflict and disease which threatens to wipe out the entire tribe.