Nature news

The thin white filament, approximately the size of a human eyelash, is “by far the largest bacterium known to date,” said Jean-Marie Volland, a marine biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-author of a paper announcing the discovery Thursday in the journal Science.

Beyond the material and environmental consequences, this deforestation also threatens human rights, including the rights of marginalized communities to life, physical integrity, a reasonable quality of life and dignity. Brazil is one of the most worrying cases in this regard.