Brazil dismantles 'biggest destroyer' of Amazon rainforest

 

The group is accused of logging and burning large areas of public land in the Amazon  

The authorities in Brazil say they have dismantled a criminal organization they believe was the "biggest destroyer" of the Amazon rainforest. The gang is accused of invading, logging and burning large areas of public land and selling these illegally for farming and grazing.

In a statement, Brazilian Federal Police said the group committed crimes worth more than $220m. A federal judge has issued 14 arrest warrants for alleged gang members. Twenty-two search warrants were also issued and four suspects are being called in for questioning.

The police operation covers four Brazilian states, including Sao Paulo. Five men and a woman have already been arrested in Para state in the north of the country, Globo news reported.  The correspondent also reported from Rio de Janeiro that details are still sketchy, partly because the police operation is focused on one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the Amazon region.

Political and police corruption is still rife in Brazil's interior, the correspondent added. That problem coupled with alleged ineptitude on the part of the federal government means that loggers and illegal miners are able to operate with impunity, he says.

  The Amazon rainforest is home to half of the planet's remaining tropical forests

The police announced the operation in a statement: "The Federal Police carried out today Operation Chestnut Tree designed to dismantle a criminal organization specializing in land grabbing and environmental crimes in the city of Novo Progresso, in the south-western region of Para.

Brazil says Amazon deforestation rose 28% in a year

Last year, the Brazilian government said the rate of deforestation in the Amazon increased by 28% between August 2012 and July 2013, after years of decline. It made a commitment in 2009 to reduce Amazon deforestation by 80% by the year 2020. Brazil is home to the biggest area of Amazon rainforest, a vast region where one in 10 known species on Earth and half of the planet's remaining tropical forests are found, according to the leading conservation organization, WWF.

 

Minister Izabella Teixeira says she will tackle the problem with local authorities

The government is working to reverse this "crime", Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said.
Activists and environmentalists have blamed the increase in destruction on a controversial reform to Brazil's forest protection law in 2012. The changes reduced protected areas around farms and declared an amnesty for areas destroyed before 2008. The reform also made it easier for the land grabbing and environmental crimes in the city of  Novo Progresso, as it opened up loopholes in the laws.
The 28% rise interrupts a period of declining deforestation which began in 2009. The worst year on record was 2004, when 27,000 sq km of forest was destroyed.

 

Huge swathes of rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon have been cleared by loggers

Global forest loss

• The Earth lost 2.3 million sq km of tree cover in 2000-12, because of logging, fire, disease or storms
• But the planet also gained 800,000 sq km of new forest, meaning a net loss of 1.5 million sq km, an area the size of Mongolia.
• Brazil showed the best improvement of any country, cutting annual forest loss in half between 2003-04 and 2010-11

The reform, a long-standing demand of the country's farmers' lobby, known as the ruralists, was passed after several vetoes by President Dilma Rousseff.

"If you sleep with the ruralist lobby, you wake up with deforestation," Amazon expert Paulo Adario from Greenpeace wrote on Twitter.
Ms Teixeira said the destruction rate was "unacceptable" but denied President Dilma Rousseff's administration were to blame.
"This swing is not related to any federal government fund cuts for law enforcement," she told reporters, adding that around 4,000 criminal actions have been taken against deforesters in the past year.
The majority of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions, believed to be one of the main causes of global warming, stem from deforestation.