RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Deforestation of the Amazon in protected areas (federal and state conservation units) and in indigenous lands, where logging is forbidden by law, was higher than the average recorded in the entire biome last year.
If only the federal UCs (federal conservation units) were to be considered, inspected by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), a body linked to the Ministry of the Environment, logging increased 84 percent between August 2018 and July 2019, when compared to the previous 12 months.
Deforestation in Conservation Units (parks, forests and reserves) as a whole increased 35 percent between August last year and July this year (rising from 767 km² to 1,035 km²); in indigenous lands, the increase was 65 percent (from 260.6 km² to 429.9 km²), according to preliminary data from the PRODES system from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which show the official deforestation rates.
There were 412 km² of clear-cutting within the forests protected by the federal government, compared to 223 km² in the previous period, according to official information compiled by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
The rise in the invasion of protected areas between August 2018 and July 2019 has made this the worst period of the past 14 years, only lagging behind the figure recorded in 2005, when 586 km² were destroyed.
Considering all UCs, the most compromised unit was the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area (APA), managed by the State of Pará. It is part of the Terra do Meio mosaic, around the BR-163 highway. It was in that region that Fire Day occurred in early August, which helped drive the fires in the biome.
Within this APA occurred the largest deforestation polygon in the entire Amazon: an area of 4.5 thousand hectares (45 km²) was destroyed altogether, according to PRODES imagery. There was another 3,200-hectare cut this year.
Change
In general, most of the deforestation in the Amazon occurs in plots of up to 50 hectares, a strategy that helps to circumvent inspection. This year, however, there was an increase in the number of clusters with more than 500 hectares.
A survey carried out by the Infoamazonia data journalism website, shared with Estado newspaper, shows that among the 36 deforested areas with over 1,000 hectares in 2019 throughout the Amazon, 12 are in conservation units or indigenous lands – at least partially.
Among these, six are in the APA Triunfo do Xingu – and two cover the Terra do Meio Ecological Station. There is also one in the Baú Indigenous Land, which is next to Terra do Meio, and another two in the Jamanxim National Forest (Flona), also in the region.
In other parts of the Amazon, according to Infoamazonia, a cut of 2,000 hectares in the Campos Amazônicos National Park and another of 1,300 thousand in the Rio Preto-Jacundá Extractive Reserve, in Rondônia are noteworthy. The most devastated indigenous land was Ituna/Itatá, in the region of Altamira, in Pará.
Eight percent (12,000 ha) of the 142,500 hectares were stripped. Jair Bolsonaro’s management plans ways to flexibilize the management of indigenous lands.
When asked, the Ministry of the Environment did not comment.
BR-163 highway
According to researcher Paulo Barreto, from Imazon, the areas along the BR-163 highway has been the entry point for the expansion of land grabbing and cattle ranching for some years, with several slaughterhouses nearby that buy illegally obtained meat.
The Secretary of Environment and Sustainability of Pará, Mauro de Almeida, said that the regions of São Felix do Xingu, Novo Progresso and Altamira are the main challenges for the fight against deforestation in the state.
According to Almeida, in the wake of the 4,500 hectares cut in the APA Triunfo do Xingu, three people were arrested. “We stopped the problem on the 4,500 hectares because in fact, 20,000 hectares of deforestation had been contracted,” he said.
“APA is a mild conservation category because it allows some private properties to remain inside. And there is no management plan to encourage conservation through special measures, such as payment for environmental services. Conservation would depend on applying the Forest Code and the Environmental Crimes Law,” says Barreto.
He believes there has been a decrease in confidence in the application of the law since the Forest Code reform in 2012, which pardoned a number of illegal loggers, and with the approval of a law in 2017 by Temer’s government that eased landholding legalization of occupied federal lands in the Amazon.
The justification was to grant tenure to the most impoverished and to repair historical injustices against people who occupied the region, after the federal government’s call in the 1970s, and who never had their situation legalized. For environmentalists, this policy favored land grabbers.
A study carried out by the researcher and published in the magazine Environmental Research Letters in June, estimated profits from the law of up to R$8 billion (US$2 billion) for land grabbers. “In addition, the market for meat remains good, especially with increased exports to China,” says Barreto.
Inspection
Experts who monitor the environmental area still blame the growth of deforestation in the area on factors such as the weakening of federal inspection and the government’s intention to flexibilize the commercial exploitation of areas currently protected. In 2018, ICMBio’s budget to protect forests had been R$23 million.
This year, this budget decreased by almost 50 percent, reaching R$13.5 million.
Source: Estado de S. Paulo.