Brazil: proposed railway threatens bushmaster snakes

[John Ashworth]

Trying to save the heat-seeking Atlantic bushmaster

It's easy to campaign to save endangered species like pandas and woolly spider monkeys because they're fluffy and cute. But what about venomous snakes? These are crucial predators in Brazil's Atlantic rainforest ecosystem...

There are now plans by ENRC, a British-Kazakh mining company, to build a railway right through one of the few remaining areas of virgin Atlantic rainforest.

ENRC's aim is to transport iron ore from a mine in the interior to the port of Iheus, despite the region being named by Unesco as a priority region for conservation...

the railway would be an ecological disaster for the rainforest and... bushmasters.