Greenpeace Buys Tons of Illegally Cut Brazilian Wood, Delivers it to Police

Typography
Environmental activists parked a truckload of illegally cut Amazon hardwood in front of a police station in Brazil's largest city on Monday to demonstrate how easy it is to skirt the law.

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Environmental activists parked a truckload of illegally cut Amazon hardwood in front of a police station in Brazil's largest city on Monday to demonstrate how easy it is to skirt the law.


Members of Greenpeace posing as wood buyers bought the 30 metric tons (33 tons) of timber in the remote state of Rondonia bordering Bolivia and used an agent to obtain permits that falsely stated the wood had been legally cut, said Paulo Adario, coordinator of the group's Amazon campaign against deforestation.


The lumber was taken by truck 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) to Sao Paulo.


Adario said the demonstration showed that Brazil's efforts to combat deforestation in the Amazon are falling short in the face of illegal logging and farmers clearing land to make way for cattle pastures and soy plantations.


He said the idea was "to show how illegally cut wood supplies the domestic market and to prod the federal government" to more closely monitor lumber activity.


!ADVERTISEMENT!

Federal police thanked Greenpeace for delivering the wood, and said they would start an investigation into the seller and those responsible for delivering the permits. Detectives also cut samples from the lumber to keep as evidence.


Brazil's government announced earlier this month that increased law enforcement and stringent environmental regulation have slowed destruction of the Amazon rain forest by 31 percent this year.


The rain forest lost 18,900 square kilometers (7,300 square miles) -- an area more than half the size of Belgium -- between July 2004 and August 2005, down from 27,200 square kilometers (10,500 square miles) the year before, according to Environment Minister Marina Silva.


Officials said the largest decline in deforestation came along the edge of an unpaved jungle highway stretching from the midwestern city of Cuiaba to the Amazon River port in Santarem.


Environmentalists say a plan to pave the highway will lead to yet-more-massive deforestation as more land is turned into farms.


The wood brought from Rondonia state to Sao Paulo made it through two government checkpoints without any problems from authorities, illustrating how easy it is in Brazil to make illegally cut wood appear legal, Greenpeace said.


Source: Associated Press


Contact Info:


Website :