May 28, 2022

09:05

Ívina Garcia – Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – Five men were arrested for environmental crimes in two actions carried out by military police officers from the Environmental Police Battalion (BPAmb), on Thursday, 26, and in the afternoon of Friday, 27. The cases were recorded in a plot on Avenida Max Teixeira, North Zone of Manaus, and on the highway Manoel Urbano, in Iranduba (27 kilometers from the capital).

The force received a complaint reporting possible environmental crime in Avenida Max Teixeira, and, when arriving at the address, arrested four men for practice of vegetal suppression and earthwork in an area of Permanent Preservation Unit (UPP) without an Operation License. With them, the team seized a tractor backhoe, three chainsaws, a hatchet, and an axe.

Already in the arrest that occurred in Iranduba, a man was driving a truck with approximately 15m³ of firewood without a Forestry Origin Document (DOF), valued at R$15 thousand. He was arrested and taken to the 31st Integrated Police District.

Environmental crimes on the rise

All these actions are part of the daily life of those who live in the Amazon. According to a survey conducted by the Igarapé Institute, based on data between 2016 and 2021 on environmental crimes, of the 369 operations to combat organized environmental crime in the Legal Amazon carried out by the Federal Police, 28 of them were carried out in Amazonas, 27% of which were illegal timber extraction operations.

The environmentalist and geographer Carlos Durigan explains the negative effects on the degradation of urban spaces. “The Conservation Units are specially protected spaces that fulfill a very important function of protecting natural ecosystems and the associated biodiversity which, in turn, guarantee ecosystem services of extreme importance for our existence, such as quality water, clean air and a balanced climate”.

For him, the growing degradation entails direct effects on people’s quality of life. “When a protected area is invaded or degraded, we lose the natural heritage it protects and our quality of life worsens,” he says. 

“The Conservation Units are also spaces of public interest. So, when they are degraded, our natural heritage is wasted to serve private interests that often do not benefit the community”, adds the environmentalist.

He states that conserving natural areas in urban spaces is extremely important to guarantee, then, the “good provisioning of quality ecosystem services so that we can have a healthy life and still live with our rich biodiversity in a more positive way”.