Tourists meet Tortoise.

Traveling from the heart of the Amazon rainforest to the Tropical savannah climate of the Brazilian capital of Brasilia offers a lesson in contrasts -- patches of forest and deforestation are replaced with monolithic white government buildings, poor villagers of the Amazon with well-dressed politicians and businesspeople.

Thousands of years ago, a tribe of indians settled near modern day Santarem, nestled on the banks of where the Tapajós River joins Amazon in the state Pará, Brazil, living harmoniously in the region's lush rainforest.

Photo via Betacontrol

The tiny town of Urucu, deep in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, could easily be seen as some sort of eco-paradise.

Perhaps the most striking thing about flying over the Amazon rainforest is how untouched it looks; there's no checkered quilt of farmland or veins of highway. From horizon to horizon it's nothing but an impossibly vast sea of green, inspiring the same sense of minuteness one might feel gazing at the Milky Way.

Photo via TomekY

If you thought unscrupulous logging practices were the only threat to the world's largest rainforest, then think again.

photo: Chany Crystal via flickr

Though support, both political and financial, for the UN REDD forest protection scheme has been growing, there's also a growing opposition voice expressing the concern that, though keeping forests standing is a good thing, the REDD program could well run roughshod over the rights of

photo: Alexander Torrenegra via flickr

Here's an interesting wrinkle on the ongoing effort to slow Amazon deforestation: Reuters repor

image: GDS Digital via EU Infrastructure, scroll down for full infographic.

Brazil's planned 11 gigawatt Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River (a tributar

In a dramatic scene of protest today in the Brazilian Capitol Building, several dozen