The columns of smoke over Apuí, in the south of Amazonas, can be seen a few kilometers away, amid the dense green of the Amazon rainforest, in a sign that fires and deforestation have once again dominated the region. Signs of the devastation caused by the fire are all over the city, from trucks carrying logs of hardwood along the roads to the fire that contaminates the air in the city, irritating eyes and noses.
The small city of 21,000 inhabitants is at the center of the resurgence of fires and deforestation in the Amazon region. The fire outbreak bulletin prepared by the Amazonas State Department of the Environment places Apuí in first place in the first week of August. Neighboring Manicoré, Novo Aripuanã and Humaitá are among the top 10. The region is the base of the Onda Verde operation, which since July 22nd – and for a month – took agents from the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) and agents from the Amazonas Environmental Military Police to search and destroy camps, fine deforesters, collect equipment.
See a photo shoot at reut.rs/2v5kkU0 A few days after the agents left Apuí, the deforesters returned to work. “It’s almost like wiping ice. Some get scared and don't come back. But they are the orange ones. The big ones aren’t even here,” an inspection employee who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of threats told Reuters.
Close to the border with Rondônia, the southern region of Amazonas — a state that, according to the NGO WWF, was one of the least affected by deforestation — has suffered the effects of the opening of the Trans-Amazonian Highway and the advance of the arc of deforestation in search of new land for pasture. “This region in the south of Amazonas was not part of the high control area. It’s been about 120 days since we’ve seen a very high spike in deforestation,” Ibama agent Jaime Pereira da Costa, coordinator of the operation, told Reuters.
Evading inspection, loggers have come from Mato Grosso and Rondônia to deforest in the area. “The logger migrates, evading inspection. He's the first to arrive. First comes timber speculation, then comes livestock farming and then soybeans and other plantations. Then it becomes difficult to hold back”, he said. The fires that can be seen everywhere are the second stage of a predatory economy that begins with the removal and sale of hardwood. With nothing left to take, loggers set fire to the forest and sell the land illegally for pasture.
The opening of new deforestation fronts already appears in government data. After reaching its lowest rate in 2012, at 4,571 square kilometers, deforestation in the Legal Amazon rose again the following year. According to data from Prodes, the satellite monitoring system, deforested areas increased by 29 percent between 2015 and 2016, reaching 7,989 square kilometers. Data from the latest Deter report – another satellite monitoring system, less precise, but which reveals points of attention month by month – showed that, in June, 1,045 square kilometers of the Amazon were under alerts for degradation of the forest area.
The Minister of the Environment, José Sarney Filho, states that ministry records indicate that deforestation has fallen again. Prodes 2016/2017 data should only be released in November, but preliminary numbers would indicate a reversal of the trend. “These are preliminary data, but everything indicates that the curve is falling. We are optimistic,” he stated. The minister guarantees that the government has once again invested heavily in operations, such as Onda Verde.
/Lisandra Paraguassu
Source: Agrolink
