Brazilian Officials Face Charges Over Amazon Destruction Caused By Logging

Illegal logging has sharply accelerated destruction of the Amazon and the biggest culprit is the Brazilian government, according to new evidence.

Officials are expected to face criminal charges after satellite imagery revealed the worst-hit regions belonged to the Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, or Incra, a state agency which distributes land.

The top 100 illegal loggers, with Incra at the top, would be sued, the environment minister, Carlos Minc, told a news conference. "It was a terrible result. We're going to blow all 100 of them out of the water and then some."

Official data released on Monday showed that 292 square miles of rainforest were chopped down in August, more than twice the rate for the same month last year. The National Institute of Space Studies said its findings would probably have been even worse had it obtained images of a quarter of the forest covered by dense clouds in August.

Until recently Brazil's government highlighted an apparent slowdown in the rate of deforestation as proof of conservation success. This week's announcement was all the more embarrassing because the six largest deforested areas since 2005 were owned by Incra.

Officials tasked with distributing land to the poor, along with vote-chasing mayors and other politicians in the Amazon, were accused of turning a blind eye to the tree-felling by peasants, big landowners and logging companies.

Upcoming elections aggravated the trend, said the environment minister, who blamed expanded agricultural activity as well as land theft through the falsification of property titles.

"When you have elections, the appetite of authorities to enforce laws is reduced," said Paulo Adario, of the advocacy group Greenpeace. "But the federal government has to step in and do its job."

Adario also blamed the dramatic global food price increases for encouraging cattle ranchers and soy farmers to push deeper into the forest and clear land. "The tendency of deforestation rising is deeply related to the fact that food prices are going up."

Big landowners have long argued that poor peasants resettled by Incra were driving the deforestation, a view bolstered by the estimates that since 2005 some 223,000 hectares (550,000 acres) of forest were destroyed on six Incra properties.

Incra's president, Rolf Hackbart, defended his agency by saying the affected areas had in fact been legally settled between 1995 and 2002. It was not immediately possible to verify the conflicting claims.

Other figures released by the environment ministry showed that private land holders deforested more than three times as much as Incra between January and August of this year, suggesting soy and cattle barons are still causing far more damage.

The government's green credentials have been under intense scrutiny since Marina Silva, a high-profile champion of the rainforest, quit as environment minister in May following bruising battles with cabinet colleagues.

Minc, her successor, said the government will create an environmental police force with 3,000 heavily armed and specially trained officers to help protect the Amazon.