Francisco Alvo Mendes Filho, known as Chico Mendes, was a defender of the tropical rain forests and a champion of the concept of sustainable harvest as a means of saving and protecting that threatened ecosystem. As president of the local Rural Workers Union, representing rubber tappers in his native Brazil, Mendes became too powerful and politically influential for ranchers who wanted to turn the rain forest into grazing land for their cattle. The struggle between them ended in 1988, when Mendes was assassinated.

Chico Mendes. (Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.)

Chico Mendes was born in 1944 in Acre Province of Brazil, along the upper reaches of the Amazon River not far from the border with Peru and Bolivia. Following his father, he was a seringueiro, a rubber tapper. He farmed a small clearing, but relied...