TAKE ACTION: Let Ugandan Government know rainforests and their ecological services including water, climate and biodiversity are more important than sugar which can be grown elsewhere

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni continues to pursue legally dubious plans to destroy large areas of the Mabira Forest Reserve [search], Uganda's most important intact and protected rainforest, to produce sugar for biofuels. Some one-third of the reserve, about 7,000 hectares of an area which has been protected since 1932, will lose its protection for sugar cane production by the Mehta Group of India's "Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited" (Scoul). Earlier indications had been that the project was to be reviewed and cancelled, illustrating once again that no rainforest is protected for long... What is so exciting is that this cyber-protest is in support of one of Africa's first grassroots modern ecological protest campaigns - with local peoples organizing boycotts against Scoul sugar company, setting up cyber-petitions and text messaging via cell phones to organize protests. A dramatic discussion is being held in Ugandan society and in the media regarding the legitimacy of giving away forest reserves to private business interests. Efforts to save Mabira rainforest are a spontaneous, home-grown rainforest conservation protest that deserves the international community's continued support... Please contact the entire Mehta Group below; as well as the Ugandan parliament, ministries and embassies, and insist that plans to produce sugar as a biofuel in Mabira protected forest by Mehta Group's Scoul sugar be abandoned. Let them know rainforest destruction for biofuel production [search] is unacceptable, and the Mehta Group will be held accountable if the project proceeds. TAKE ACTION