New Colombian president pledges to protect rainforest

by FABIANO MAISONNAVE

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high deforestation rates in the Amazon. He’s promised to reserve land where people can legally harvest rubber, acai and other non-wood forest products, and to limit the expansion of agribusiness responsible for deforestation. But to do that he needs first to establish reign over large lawless areas where cattle ranching is expanding.