Vanishing ForestRemnant patches of Brazilian rain forest, the world's most biologically diverse habitat, edge land chain-sawed, bulldozed, and scorched to make way for crops and cattle. Hard-to-remove trees may be left standing. At current clearing rates, and with climate change continuing, scientists predict that 40 percent of the Amazon will be destroyed and a further 20 percent degraded within two decades.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Return to TraditionManoki Indians displaced from their ancestral territory—a fate shared by many of Brazil's 170 indigenous Amazonian peoples—return to reclaim the land ritually and lament its degradation.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Man Versus MachineIndustrial-scale soybean farms such as this 100,000-acre (40,000 hectares) operation in Nova Mutum in the state of Mato Grosso help make Brazil the world's second largest exporter of the legume, after the U.S. Highly mechanized, the farms employ only one person for every 400 acres (160 hectares).

Photograph byAlex Webb

Grain DrainA barge of soybeans is readied for shipment along the Madeira River. Although cattle ranching still drives most Amazonian deforestation, the proliferation of large-scale soy farming over the past decade is also wiping out forests, particularly in Mato Grosso. An average of 8,500 square miles (22,000 square kilometers) of Amazon rain forest was cut down annually between 2000 and 2005.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Boatload of SoyGolden cargo on the Madeira River, this boatload of soybeans belongs to Blairo Maggi, the "King of Soy." The world's largest producer, growing 350,000 acres (142,000 hectares) of soybeans, Maggi is also the governor of Mato Grosso. He insists that concerns about Amazon deforestation are exaggerated.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Crosses of ConvictionA boy mourns activist Dorothy Stang at a gathering to mark the first anniversary of her murder. The 73-year-old nun, who dedicated her life to saving the forest and helping workers, was killed by hired gunmen in 2005 after trying to stop ranchers from clearing land. White crosses represent 772 victims of land wars in the state of Pará, and 48 red crosses symbolize local people now under death threats.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Fighting FiguresSilhouetted effigies representing Brazil's president and the demise of the country's agriculture dangle in the afternoon sun in Lucas do Rio Verde in Mato Grosso, near the deforested southern edge of the Amazon. Unhappy with rising production costs and their inflated debt burden owing to an overvaluation of Brazil's currency, soy farmers across the country forced the closure of grain silos and blocked roads and railways for over a month last spring. The government responded with a more than 26-billion-dollar farm aid package.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Endless JourneyManoki Indians travel by truck to their villages in northwest Mato Grosso after a day protesting the illegal clearing of their forests, their historic hunting and fishing territory. Like most of Brazil's 170 indigenous peoples, the Manoki have been struggling to survive ever since they were contacted by rubber gatherers and telegraph linemen who exposed them to diseases and took their lands in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, a Jesuit mission took them in; most stayed there until the government granted them new territory in 1968. Now, the remaining Manoki—numbering about 300 in two villages—are trying to stave off soybean producers, who are clearing thousands of acres of forest.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Explosive MeasuresFederal police in Pará drill a hole for explosives, preparing to blow up one of many illegal landing strips used by absentee ranchers and farmers to inspect their holdings.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Preparing for a RaidAgents from IBAMA, Brazil's understaffed environmental protection agency, join a local police officer, center, for a raid on grileiros, land grabbers, illegally clearing forest.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Hoofin' ItCowboys herd prime assets: Beef exports earn Brazil three billion dollars a year. With cattle numbers now topping 60 million, the demand for new pastureland drives much deforestation.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Caught in the ActSawdust flies as a logger illegally fells a hardwood on a private ranch. "The Amazon is too big for police to shut down all illegal operations," says Enrico Bernard of Conservation International.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Smoky SkiesTimber mills spew smoke across BR-163, Brazil's "soy highway," in Mato Grosso. Environmentalists fear that when the road is fully paved, assaults on the forests flanking its 1,100-mile (1,770 kilometers) length will intensify.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Hanging OutCorner-store hangouts are a common sight in the dirt-road neighborhoods around frontier cities such as Altamira in Pará. In the 1990s, after the government offered new agricultural subsidies, powerful elites drove squatters off rural land. Many settled on urban fringes.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Village LifeWhen the paving of BR-163 is complete, land speculators may pressure the surviving Panará Indians in their village of Nãnsêpotiti. Once scattered in nine settlements in southern Pará, the Panará were decimated by diseases in the 1970s, when the road was begun.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Holding OnA Panará mother and her children huddle together in the stillness of the early morning in Nãnsêpotiti village. Forced to move to the Xingu Indigenous Park for two decades, the Panará finally won back some of their land in a precedent-setting lawsuit in 1996. But the highway again threatens the Panará, who now number only 300.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Hard-knock LifeTen-year-old Jeremias Silva lives with his parents and two brothers in an isolated government settlement in Mato Grosso. His father, a farmer, sells illegal timber to make ends meet. "I hope for better days," Jeremias says. "Here in the forest it's not so good."

Photograph byAlex Webb

Landmark of HopeA church in the middle of a squatter encampment in Mato Grosso lends a semblance of stability to landless workers who have lived in their makeshift settlement for more than two years. They took up here after a landowner, backed by a local judge, forced them to move from land 18 miles (29 kilometers) south of here that they'd been granted by the Brazilian government. The dispute over local recognition of a federal land grant is a common one, and these peasants are just a few of Brazil's millions of landless laborers.

Photograph by Alex Webb

Click here for an interactive map:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0701/feature1/zoomify/index.html