Brazil dismantles 'biggest destroyer' of Amazon rainforest | Hacker News Reader

Brazil dismantles 'biggest destroyer' of Amazon rainforest

bbc.com

151 pointsrblion23 comments

Such crap. Cattle ranches are the leading cause of Amazon deforestation in Brazil. Logging (legal and illegal) is 2-3%.

Edit: Right, here's some numbers: http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html

I read the article as meaning that the gang was part of the cattle grazing/farming industry. They burn the land, they bring in grazers, and by the time anyone notices the grazers have "been there for a while" so it's difficult to remove them, destroy everything, and let forest regrow.

That said, I doubt removing one gang will make much difference unless they change the system that allows ranchers to stay on illegally burned land.

Removing one gang usually results in another gang moving in on that territory. There's always a little guy looking for an opportunity.

Yes, (replying to all here) you are correct. I found the claim distasteful to say the least, and reacted after reading the article. In any case, I couldn't have done a better job of pointing out the fallacy of it than the mongabay.com page. I would've edited again right away had I thought anyone needs more convincing of the overall point.

The second paragraph of the BBC piece does say "The gang is accused of invading, logging and burning large areas of public land and selling these illegally for farming and grazing", and doesn't suggest which parts of that causes the most damage

Your link does note that at least some of the grazing land comes from squatters "selling" forest. This may be considered a form of that.

First you log, then you burn (to clean the land), then with the money you forge the documents for the land, and finally you move the cattle in. It's a process.

It's election time in Brazil right now, and everyone is trying to look good. This might just be our current president and candidate to reelection Dilma Rousseff trying to win over the evironmental cause votes, which is a huge electorate and a huge chunk of Marina Silva's electorate, who holds second place in the current vote intention polls.

Yeah, Marina Silva is well-known on international community as a great defender of the Amazon and North region of Brazil.

Also, these guys have a huge amount of money, so they can pay for their freedom. Just picking the right layer and the right judge to give the 'habeas corpus'.

Oh, sorry, I can't say that here. It's - what some folks say here - 'low self esteem'.

You are 100% right.

Election time everyone loves the law

In the last poll Marina would beat Dilma. Her popularity got a huge boost after Eduardo Campos died in the plane crash earlier this month.

This article implies that the 28% increase in deforestation between 2012 and 2013 was due to illegal deforestation. The measured area is 1,272 km^2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil). The criminal damages amount to $220 million, making each square kilometer worth $172,955. I like to think in terms of acres, so dividing that number by 247 gives me the value of 1 acre of Brazilian rainforest in USD: $700.22. Surely my math is wrong?

Disclosure: Your comment includes infinitely more information about the market value of Brazilian rainforest land than I had ever possessed before this moment.

That said, there are apparently ~3.34 million km^2 of Brazilian rainforest as of 2013, according to that Wikipedia page.

According to this other wikipedia page[0], the total land area of the United States, including Alaska, is about 9.6 million km^2.

So, there's a metric shitload of Brazilian rainforest. It's not exactly in short supply, from a market standpoint. And most of it is, y'know, in the middle of nowhere.

Add in that Brazil as a whole is of similar size to the US (8.5 million km^2), and is still a relatively poor country, and $700/acre does not strike me as a shocking number.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

Oh, ok, asciimo was wondering that it's cheap... I didn't understand this from his post.

The wood alone is probably worth more than that, but I imagine there are some limits on how much wood a criminal group can sell before getting couch. The Amazon Forest grows over an extremely poor ground (that's mostly the reason it's still there); one can get some (not much) productivity from pastures on it, but more lucrative crops just won't grow unless one corrects the soil, what's a tremendously expensive process.

3 Part BBC Documentary "I Bought a Rainforest"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0461lhs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046td9n

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047h528 ( Farming / Burning Land )

Great job by Brazilian authorities.

However, I wonder if they could come up with a more intimidating name for their crackdown than "Operation Chestnut Tree."

Well, since you asked...

"chestnut" is a literal but not faithful translation of "castanheira", it should really be "Brazil nut tree", which is somewhat more imposing than the run-of-the-mill chestnut tree:

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficheiro:Castanheira_1.jpg

http://d3nehc6yl9qzo4.cloudfront.net/img/web_226731_36660.jp...

It can live for hundreds of years; its wood used to be in high demand, but nowadays it's considered endangered so it's illegal to cut down a Brazil nut tree.

Our Federal Police's operations have names that range from awesome ("Egyptian Plague") to truly bizarre ("Deja Vu", "Titanic"). All in all, Chestnut Tree is a fairly mild one.

They aren't convicted yet, and if the place is as corrupt as the article says and they have made that much money, who knows what will happen.

They are going to the federal sphere.. which is much more clean to deal with.. We got problems(eg. corruption) here in Brazil specially with regions with low development index, like the ones on the amazon region..

Population here in Brazil use to have a good trust relationship with Federal Police.. because of the things they´ve being doing.. with investigations that are even encarcerating some high profile politicians.. fighting drug cartels, etc..

The problem here is that the law is not as harsh as the US for instance.. and for things like this im sure it should be.. to give this criminals a good example of what can happen to them, no matter how rich they get with the scheme

"if the place is as corrupt as the article says" It is.

And also even if they are convicted they probably will not stay in prison for long. Assuming the way those things happen now a days there.

Looks like the incumbent president is trying to get environmentalist votes. Do you think they might be made examples of and handed harsher sentences, just to make her look good?

Edit: I guess I'm not good at inferring gender of names :p

Make HER look good. (Dilma Rousseff is the incumbent President of Brazil. Her main opponent, Marina Silva, is also a woman.)

Maybe it sounds more intimidating in Portuguese? Though what about "Operation Forest Freedom"? ;-)

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