Brazil busts major Amazon logging gang, arrests 89

[Judi Lynn]

Brazil busts major Amazon logging gang, arrests 89
Reuters

Jun 2, 2005 — BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazilian authorities broke up the biggest illegal logging operation in the Amazon on Thursday and arrested 89 people, including many from the government agency charged with protecting the forests.

The gang, which was the target of Brazil's biggest crackdown on Amazon deforestation, had illegally cut down an estimated $370 million of Amazon timber since 1990, the federal police and environment ministry said.

The crackdown came a few weeks after environmentalists sharply criticized government inaction to save the Amazon in the wake of data showing an area of jungle larger than the U.S. state of New Jersey was cut down last year. The government report said deforestation had reached its second-highest level on record last year.

Federal police said that among the 89 people arrested across six states were businessmen, loggers and the head of the government's Ibama environmental watchdog in the state of Mato Grosso. Another 39 Ibama employees also were arrested.
(snip/...)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=813895

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You may remember reading in the last week or two that some of the illegal Brazilian lumber gets moved through Mexico into the U.S., as in "lumber laundering."



Dorothy Stang was
killed defending the poor
from the greedy.

[glitch]

1. I want to see serious sentencing here.

Excellent sting! Now let's follow up with big time jail time.

[meganmonkey]

2. Good news - but scary that some of the people busted were

working for the agency trying to protect it .

[0rganism]

3. Finally, some real eco-terrorists get to go to jail

Let's see what kind of sentences they get. Perhaps the logging interest has infiltrated the Brazillian judiciary to the same degree that it penetrated Ibama?