Brazil’s government “Worst Illegal Logger of Amazon Forests
Brazil’s government has been named as the worst illegal logger of Amazon forests by Environment Ministry, one of its own departments.
The Ministry has drawn up a list of the 100 worst offenders and The Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), was on top the list.
The six largest deforested areas since 2005 all belong to Incra, which distributes land to the poor. Together 223,000 hectares (550,000 acres) of the world’s largest rain forest were destroyed on those six properties, as settlers chopped down trees to sell and plant crops.
“We’re going to blow all 100 of them out of the water and then some,” an irate Environment Minister Carlos Minc told a news conference, referring to plans to sue them.
Releasing the list of illegal loggers, he said the environment ministry will bring criminal charges against all of them.
Official data showed on Monday a renewed increase in the rate of deforestation. Some 756 square kilometers (292 square miles) were chopped down in August, twice the rate in July, the National Institute of Space Studies (Inpe) said.
“It was a terrible result,” Minc said, blaming expanding cattle and farm activity, as well as land theft through the falsificaiton of property titles.
Greenpeace has accused Incra officials of illegally handing over rainforest to logging companies and creating fake settlements to skirt environmental regulations.
But Incra’s president, Rolf Hackbart, said all the areas cited by Mr Minc as being deforested by his department were areas legally settled between 1995 and 2002.
The environment minister said he would create an environmental police force with 3,000 armed officers to help combat deforestation.