URUARA, Brazil, Jan 19 (Portal) – Brazilian environmental agents on Thursday cut through the rainforest with machetes in search of criminals in the first anti-deforestation crackdowns under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has pledged to end the destruction he inherited to finish predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Portal exclusively followed raids by the environmental agency Ibama in the rainforest state of Para to prevent loggers and ranchers from illegally clearing the forest.
The agency also launched raids in Roraima and Acre states this week, said Tatiane Leite, Ibama Environmental Protection Agency coordinator.
About 10 Ibama agents set off in pickup trucks from their base in the municipality of Uruara, Pará, along with a dozen federal police officers on Thursday to a cluster of points where satellite imagery showed loggers and ranchers recently at work illegally cleared the forest.
Traveling 12 hours on dirt roads that illegally traversed an indigenous reservation, the convoy reached five areas that were being deforested and burned around the time of last October’s election in which Lula ran against Bolsonaro.
The areas are all within the Cachoeira Seca Indigenous Reserve, where logging is strictly prohibited.
Four of the tracts appeared to have been subsequently abandoned with no evidence of people living nearby or in the process of converting them into ranches. Agents said this could be a sign that illegal ranchers have given up investing time and money to convert illegal land into productive grazing land, knowing Lula had championed a pledge to tackle deforestation.
“People know that if this happens, the government will step up law enforcement and not let them use an area they illegally logged,” said Givanildo dos Santos Lima, the agent who heads Ibama’s Uruara mission.
“If the other government had won, you would have found people here, tended pastures and cattle.”
The Bolsonaro administration had gutted staff and funds for Ibama’s environmental enforcement in his four years in office, while the former president has criticized Ibama for slapping fines on farmers and miners.
Bolsonaro gave the military and later the Justice Department authority over anti-deforestation operations, sidelining Ibama despite the agency’s extensive experience and success in fighting the destruction of the Amazon.
An area larger than Denmark was deforested under Bolsonaro, a 60% increase over the previous four years.
In another area of the reserve, agents found a newly built home with several chainsaws and a supply of weeks’ worth of food, suggesting residents likely fled shortly before Ibama’s arrival.
Flanked by police with semi-automatic weapons, Ibama agents hacked a path through the adjacent jungle to reach an area the size of 57 football fields, littered with fallen trees and charged logs.
Some improperly planted corn sprout to knee height in what appeared to be an attempt to lay claim to the area, eventually turning it into cattle pasture, agents said.
“We will come back in a helicopter and surprise them,” Lima said.
He was optimistic that Ibama would be able to conduct more raids under Lula aimed at punishing deforesters and discouraging criminals from clearing more areas.
During last year’s election campaign, Lula promised to put Ibama back in charge of fighting deforestation, with increased resources and staff. He took office on January 1, so additional money and staff have yet to reach front-line enforcers.
Bolsonaro’s government turned down several Portal requests to accompany Ibama missions during his 2019-2022 tenure. His government issued a gag order banning Ibama agents from speaking to the press, which agents say has already been reversed.
Lula first took office in 2003 when deforestation in the Amazon was nearing an all-time high, and strict enforcement of environmental laws reduced it by 72% to a record low when he left office in 2010.
Reporting by Jake Spring; Edited by Brad Haynes, Mark Porter and Leslie Adler
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