What would be good news for the Amazon rainforest was reduced to ashes to supposedly make way for cattle. An arson attack destroyed a reforestation project that replanted hundreds of thousands of trees in a nature reserve in the region.
Launched in 2019 by the Rioterra Study Center, the initiative replanted 360,000 trees in 270 hectares of the Rio Preto-Jacundá Extractive Reserve, which had already been illegally deforested by ranchers in the state of Rondônia.
The idea was ambitious: saving part of the world’s largest tropical forest and, simultaneously, fighting climate change, in addition to creating sustainable jobs, said project coordinator Alexis Bastos.
But just when the deforested land was turning into a green forest again, everything was burned by flames.
Investigators concluded that the fire, which started on September 3, was criminal, according to a forensic report from the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), to which AFP had access.
The suspicion is that land grabbers intend to transform the area into pastures for livestock. “I classify the fire as intentional, with the most likely motivation being to hinder the process of ecological restoration of the area in question”, states the document.
Telltale sign
Satellite images indicate that the flames continued in a direction against the wind, an indication that the fire was arson, according to investigators.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Pablo Hernandez Viscardi, confirmed that the police have already identified a series of suspects.
The project is located in the southwestern part of the Rio Preto-Jacundá Extractive Reserve, which has around 95,000 hectares.
The region is so remote that the Rioterra team only arrived at the site on September 6, three days after the fire started and one day after satellite images warned of the destruction.
When they arrived, they discovered that the access roads were blocked by fallen trees.
Bastos says he fainted when he saw the then reforested area reduced to ashes. “It was horrible, terrible. People have no idea what we did to recover. It was important restoration work on a large scale”, said the coordinator.
The project, which cost almost US$1 million (almost R$5 million at current prices) and created more than 100 jobs, aimed to generate a sustainable source of income for local residents, for example, with the cultivation of açaí, in addition to helping to combat climate change.
Death threats
The measure was not well received, however, by some residents of the region, home to a powerful agricultural industry.
Investigators found that the Rio Preto-Jacundá reserve is surrounded by farms with a history of environmental crimes, including repeated invasions of this preservation area.
Satellite images show how the green forest is surrounded by deforested land, which extends in several parts of the reserve.
Bastos said that the Rioterra team received death threats “constantly”. “There were cases when the guys ambushed one of our collaborators, putting a gun to his head to tell us to stop recovering the area. They said, ‘Look, now it’s just a message, but if you continue recovering the area there later It won’t be any more messages, no'”, he recalled.
Prosecutor Viscardi stated that the state of Rondônia is facing a wave of environmental crimes committed by mafias specializing in land appropriation, using hired killers and “guerilla tactics”.
“We have already detected a criminal organization focused on land grabbing and practices of environmental damage against our conservation units. This exists in our state and is probably also happening there in the Rio Preto-Jacundá Resex,” he told AFP.
But Bastos is motivated to start over from scratch. “Land grabbers cannot be allowed to think that this is normal and that they have more power than the State, that society (…) we cannot allow this to happen”, he concluded.
© Agence France-Presse
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