World Notes BRAZIL

Donning army fatigues, Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello boarded an air force SuperPuma helicopter last week and flew over the dense rain forest of Roraima in the northern Amazon. The region is home to the Yanomami, a stone-age tribe threatened with extinction. For the past three years, their federally protected lands have been devastated by gold prospectors, whose search for riches has led to the deaths of an estimated 1,200 Indians from the 9,000-member tribe, largely through disease. Last October a federal court ordered the miners to leave the territory. But hundreds remained, using crude landing strips to fly in and out of the region. Surveying the scene from the air, Collor decided to dynamite the runways. "Blow them up," he said, "and do it quickly."

Inaugurated three weeks ago, Collor used the trip to signal that he will make environmental reform one of his administration's major goals. But pro- Indian groups contend that Collor must go much further and ban all miners from the Amazon. Says Claudia Andujar, an Indian-rights activist: "The cancer is still in the area. The miners will return and destroy more forests, pollute more rivers and kill more Indians."