Introducing “chemical deforestation” – a new technique used by organised crime syndicates to bypass satellite detection and cause massive destruction in Brazilian forests – a process that is fuelling the highly lucrative “cattle laundering” trade.
In August, Wood Central revealed that up to 70% of timber traded through the Amazon could be illegal – with gangs using (supposedly) legal forest management plans to manipulate timber credits. Now, the New York Times reveals that criminals are using chemicals rather than chainsaws to clear lower-value areas of trees that are, in some cases, similar in size to New York City:
“It’s more difficult to detect; it looks more like a fire, and you can deforest thousands of hectares in a short time,” according to Ann Luiza Peterlini, a prosecutor now overseeing Brazil’s largest-ever environmental crime—against Claudexy Oliveria Lemes, a rancher who is accused of causing US $1 billion worth of damage to the Amazon.
“These criminals are always ahead of us.”
Ann Luiza Peterlini, a prosecutor now overseeing Brazil’s largest-ever environmental crime
Ms Peterlini believes that ranchers – who are mostly running cattle on Brazilian lands – were turning to chemicals to avoid detection via satellite monitoring systems (including NASA’s NISAR radar, a collaboration between the United States and India), which has become one of the primary defences against deforestation.
Those systems search for the abrupt disappearance of forests, typically clear-cutting or burning. Herbicides, by contrast, cause trees to slowly lose their leaves before drying out and dying, making them difficult to differentiate from a natural tree death. That’s why authorities believe ranchers use chemicals to dry out forests and make them easier to burn. The resulting fire then destroys evidence that chemicals were ever used.
Chemical deforestation poses a more insidious threat than traditional clear-cutting because it can cause longer-lasting damage to the environment and the wildlife within the forests. The chemicals contaminate the soils, killing microorganisms and insects and potentially reaching groundwater.
The case against Claudexy Oliveria Lemes
Brazilian prosecutors accuse Mr Lemes of hiring a plan to spray chemicals across 300 square miles of forest to raise cattle. The chemicals killed many of the trees on the land, turning them grey and leafless but leaving corpses still standing. Drone images months later showed vast areas of grey, dead trees mixed among living vegetation.
Responding to the New York Times, Valber Melo, Mr Lemes’s lawyer, disputed the charges, arguing that wildfires and not pesticides had caused the tree loss on Mr Lemes’s property: “There is no scientific evidence of illegal pesticide use,” Mr Melo said.
Ms Peterlini said tests had revealed chemical residue in the soil and on leaves, and satellite imagery had shown a steady decline in vegetation despite a lack of significant fires. Investigators, Ms. Peterlini added, had also found records showing that Mr. Lemes spent $3 million on toxic defoliants and flight plans focused on spraying chemicals over the land.
Most trees in the Pantanal are not highly valuable for commercial sales, and killing them to raise cattle is far more profitable than logging sales. Meanwhile, in other regions of Brazil, including the Amazon, criminals often prefer to cut down trees and haul them off for sale.
DNA Testing is Shattering Organised Crime’s Logging Racket
In August, Wood Central revealed that scientists are using DNA and AI to end the shadow trade of conflict and illegal forest products. It comes as a crack team of global scientists is analysing thousands of tree samples and layering them in advanced statistical models using artificial intelligence, creating a database allowing customs officials and corporate auditors to verify timber origins with a simple, lab-based test.Â
That includes Professor Peter Gasson, research leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew: “It always amazes me that you take a tiny scrap of wood and have a pretty good idea of what kind of tree it comes from.”
Professor Gasson is part of a team that has collected 100,000 specimens of timber and has, since 2017, worked with FSC International, the US Forest Service and now global governments – including Australia – to build the world’s most comprehensive database of forest species.
- To learn more about the push to end the trade of illegal timbers from deforestation hotspots, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.