Environmental agents from ICMBio, Brazil’s federal agency for conservation areas, were ready to seize around 2,000 cattle from the Jamanxim National Forest, in Pará state, when they saw themselves surrounded by 40 trucks. The intimidation strategy from local ranchers, who were illegally raising the animals inside the protected area, also included a campaign on social media and a visit of local politicians to Brazil’s capital, Brasília, to dissuade federal authorities from proceeding with the operation. Some days later, a decision from a federal judge prevented the seizures of cattle of one of the ranchers. “This is very frustrating,” Guilherme Alcarás de Góes, an ICMBio agent who was in Jamanxim, told Mongabay. “It was clear that there was some political articulation behind that decision.” Facing political pressure is not the only challenge for those trying to remove cattle from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon. In 2o23, a team from ICMBio took four days only to open a path in the middle of the pasture in an illegal ranch in Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve, also in Pará. “The grass was almost 2 meters [6.5 feet] high, so a horse couldn’t get through it, let alone drive a herd over it. We only had an old tractor there, so we had to try to open a corridor through the grass,” Góes said. On another ranch, the pasture was full of trees and remains of downed tree trunks, making it difficult to round up the cattle. Not even the assistance…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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