The Brazilian Federal Police apprehended a man last week on suspicion of massive deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. According to police, businessman Bruno Heller is in charge of an illegal logging enterprise that destroys woods near Indigenous territories to raise cattle.

Heller was arrested at his home in Novo Progresso, a municipality in the northern state of Pará, on August 3.

Federal agents discovered the equivalent of R$ 125,000 ($25,000) in euro, dollars, and reals, as well as an illegal weapon and over half a kilo of undocumented raw gold thought to have originated from illegal mining in the region, at the site.

Heller's gang cleared 6,500 hectares of forest and illegally seized 21,000 hectares of public land along Indigenous reserves and environmentally protected regions, according to authorities.  The court ordered the forfeiture of the gang's 16 farms, 10,000 cattle, and R$ 116 million ($23 million).

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The investigations began after the Federal Police discovered a deforested region on the outskirts of Novo Progresso, where a big cow ranch had replaced part of the forest vegetation. Agents began closely following the gang's movements and found how the land-grabbing scheme operated.

According to police, the gang illegally stole land near their existing property and registered it in the National Rural Environmental Registry System, a digital platform for registering rural areas. They then cleared the forest on those lands and used it for livestock grazing.

Since 2006, the Brazilian environmental conservation organization IBAMA has issued 11 fines and six embargoes against Heller for irregularities and deforestation, and the agency has even barred Heller from doing agricultural activities on his estates, forcing him to remove animals from his ranches. Federal Police have said that investigations into Heller and his gang are ongoing.

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Earlier this week, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urged wealthy countries to "put their money where their mouth is" about protecting the world's remaining tropical forests.

During the environmental summit in the Amazon city of Belém, Lula said “It’s not Brazil that needs money. It’s not Colombia that needs money. It’s not Venezuela. It’s nature,” adding that after centuries of polluting the atmosphere, industrialized countries "now need to pay their bit to restore part of that which was wrecked.”

Lula then again stressed that “It’s nature that needs money. It’s nature that needs financing.”

52% of the world's principal tropical forests remain across Brazil, Indonesia, and the DRC; these massive carbon sinks are essential to initiatives seeking to slow down global warming.

Deforestation in decline under Lula

Brazil, which controls about 60% of the Amazon, has promised to end illicit deforestation by 2030 and is urging other nations to do the same.

Cattle ranching is the principal cause of deforestation, but it is also fueled by a murky combination of land grabs, corruption, and organized crime, whose tentacles also reach the illicit trade in drugs, weapons, gold, and lumber.

The destruction has already eliminated around one-fifth of the rainforest, but there are signs of improvement after a 75% jump in average yearly deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon under Bolsonaro (2019-2022) versus the previous decade.

Deforestation decreased 42.5 percent from January to July compared to the same time last year. More than 50 environmental organizations urged the governments in the area to adopt a strategy to prevent the Amazon from reaching a point of no return before the summit.

The Climate Observatory launched a petition urging other nations to support Brazil's goal of ending illegal deforestation by 2030, support Indigenous rights, and take "effective measures to fight environmental crimes."