‘It’s forbidden to chop down trees, but we all do it’
With ‘Captain Chainsaw’ in their corner, criminal loggers are operating with impunity in the Amazon
‘Macron has no idea what life is like here. We want a dignified life, a fair life … Bolsonaro gets that’
Between the shafts of sunlight piercing the rainforest canopy above his slice of the Amazon rainforest, Ijair Baratto gestures to his most valuable possessions.
The massaranduba tree, nicknamed “bulletwood” for its strength, is worth the most, at 700 reais (£128) per cubic metre, the illegal logger says – probably worth more than the average yearly salary in Brazil. Then comes garapa, at 600 reais (£110) and tatajuba, at 550 reais (£100). He doesn’t cut down mahogany, now, there is no market for it.
The race to cash in on the virgin jungle around Mr Baratto is intensifying.
Since Brazil’s far-right Jair Bolsonaro president came to power last year, deforestation has reached a rate not seen in more than a decade.
Under “Captain Chainsaw”, as Mr Bolsonaro is known, illegal loggers have been emboldened.
“Bolsonaro loves this country,” Mr Baratto says of the president who has stripped back regulations and environmental protections, despite the outrage of western governments and climate change groups.
Mr Baratto is neither a wealthy man, nor a poor one. His terracotta-tiled bungalow is comfortable, but not luxurious. A JCB sits in the drive; he roams the dirt tracks in a pickup truck himself, as do most people in Placas, in the state of Para, a middle-income town close to where he lives, on the edge of the forest. People in Para are not cutting down trees to escape abject poverty. They are doing it to make money. While there is little industry, there are alternatives – principally growing cacao. But that doesn’t give as fast an injection of cash.
And as he tots up the value of his forest, Mr Baratto has no time for the likes of France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, who threatened last August to block a trade deal with Brazil if the country didn’t live up to environmental commitments.
“Macron has no idea what life is like here,” he says. “We want a dignified life, a fair life … Bolsonaro gets that.”
There was a time when Mr Baratto would have stayed silent. Despite warnings from his lawyer – who emerges panicked from his car during our interview – he now boasts openly about cashing in on the forest.
With political top-cover coming from the capital, data from Brazil’s space agency last week showed that deforestation has leapt by almost 40 per cent in the past year, with an area the size of Lebanon wiped out.
Mr Bolsonaro, who is under domestic political pressure after corruption allegations were levelled at his two sons, is unapologetic, defiantly telling reporters in Brasilia last week that “deforestation and fires will never end” and that slashing the rainforest was a “cultural” phenomenon.
It is not a total free-for-all when it comes to Mr Barrato chopping down his patch of forest. As an illegal logger, he still needs to dodge the police and the state environmental agency, which recently burnt several trucks belonging to illegal loggers as a warning. But he is undeterred, arguing his harvesting of the bigger trees is selective and keeps one eye on a sustainable future.
“Loggers are survivors. They are not about destroying anything. You go into the forest, take the tree that interests you, and leave the rest behind,” he says. “The trees that aren’t interesting, you leave them, to see if one day they too become valuable, or if you leave it for reforesting.”
Away from Mr Baratto’s home in the forest, down an undulating terracotta dirt track, lies Placas, a frontier town on the edge of the Amazon that voted heavily for Mr Bolsonaro in elections a year ago. The town was created when the Trans-amazonian Highway slashed its way through the region in the early Seventies. Instead of a town square, Placas has a gnarled tree stump by the side of the road – the first one chopped down to create the town, in 1971. It’s the main landmark.
Nelson Fetisch, 53, a local councillor in Placas, also strongly supports Mr Bolsonaro. “Everything here revolves around wood – building a house, earning money. And we should be able to do it legally. But it’s very hard to get
the permits to be a legal logger,” Mr Fetisch argues.
Under the Paris Agreement climate deal, signed by President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil agreed to reforest 12million hectares and end illegal deforestation by 2030.
Most scientists believe Brazil will not meet this target: deforestation began rising under Ms Rousseff in 2013 after nine years of decline, and has accelerated under Mr Bolsonaro.
One prominent economist, Monica de Bolle, who in September addressed a US Congress committee on preserving the Amazon, wrote that current rates of deforestation were pushing the Amazon “dangerously close to the estimated tipping point as soon as 2021, beyond which the rainforest can no longer generate enough rain to sustain itself ”. There is also a hefty social price. In some regions of Brazil this industry has brought the illegal loggers into conflict with indigenous people; at least three tribal members have been killed this year alone.
In the neighbouring state of Amazonas, The Daily Telegraph visited an indigenous community living high above the banks of the Amazon, 45 minutes out of the town of Tefe.
Manuel Ribeiro, the 69-year-old chief of Aldeia Barreira da Missao de Cima – an indigenous community of 65 families – has led his tribal village for almost 40 years, and looks on the increasing deforestation with sadness.
“I would say to those loggers, and those people destroying the forest, please, have a conscience,” he says. “I would want them to understand that us, poor indigenous people, are not harming anyone. We love our land because our land is our mother. We rely on our land for everything. No one should want to get rid of and destroy nature.”
Emboldened by Mr Bolsonaro, Mr Baratto says: “It’s not right that anyone tells me what to do on my own land.”
He explains that, using powerful long, hand-held chainsaws, it would only take two people to bring down one of the huge trees in front of him. A team of six could cut down 10 trees a day in the June-december dry season.
That would amount to around 1,200 trees felled a year.
Even if the police turn up and “slow you down”, Mr Baratto knows the president has his back.
“It’s forbidden to chop down the trees,” he says. “But everyone does it.”