Aerial view of deforestation in the Jamanxim Forest, Pará, Brazil, in 2009. Photo: Antônio Scorza / AFP

By Cleide Carvalho
25 September 2017 SÃO PAULO (O Globo) – [Translation by Google] The government bill that reduces the National Forest (Flona) of Jamanxim, in Pará, should benefit grileiros who deforested and occupied at least 44 thousand hectares of land that should be protected. The area – larger than the city of Curitiba and home to 1.8 million people – was cleared over a period of eight years between 2008 and 2016. The project is designed to regularize the situation of former squatters who lived in the area before of the government to create the protection area.
Eight non-governmental organizations working to protect the Amazon rainforest claim that the project rewards those who acted in bad faith, as 67% of the invaders entered the Jamanxim Forest after its creation in 2006.“In ten years, we have drilled 279 infraction records only inside Jamanxim. The proposed reduction in size raises the expectation of amnesty to violators,” says Renê Luiz de Oliveira, coordinator of Fiscalization of IBAMA.In the list of politicians in the target of the environmental body is the mayor Walmir Climaco de Aguiar, elected by the PMDB in Itaituba (PA), one of the main municipalities of the BR-163 region. A timber owner, he accumulates fines of R $ 3.6 million and has already been denounced by the Federal Public Ministry of Pará for falsification of forest guides – which heat up the illicit origin of the wood – illegal gold mining in the area of ​​the Union and deforestation of 746 hectares of forest in the municipality itself, in the latter case the crime was prescribed.Climaco has a farm of 1,100 hectares, with 3,000 head of cattle, inside the National Park of Jamanxim.What today is a national park can be transformed into two Areas of Environmental Protection, which admit the presence of private businesses, and a Flona, ​​whose degree of protection is inferior to that of a park. Last June, the Jamanxim Park has already lost 862 hectares to allow the construction of the Ferrogrão Railroad, through MP 758.The mayor admits the denunciations of the MPF and says that in all of them he is defending himself.“I buy wood from more than 500 companies, I do not know who sent me illegal wood. I’ve never been a miner, either,” he says.Climaco’s deputy is Nicodemos Aguiar, brother of federal deputy Francisco Chapadinha (Can), author of five of the nine amendments designed to amend Bill 8,107. Asked by Globo, Chapadinha said through his advice that he can not respond to the actions of Climaco or anyone else.According to him, his amendments benefit families of small farmers who already occupied the areas before the creation of Flona in 2006. “It was not they (the amendments) that invaded the Flonas, but the Flonas that invaded their lands,” he said. the advice by e-mail.The mayor of Novo Progresso, Ubiraci Soares Silva, of the PSC and elected in coalition with PMDB and PT, accumulates fines of R $ 1.7 million applied by Ibama for deforesting and occupying land within the Flona do Jamanxim. At least 313.5 hectares were seized by IBAMA. He did not respond to GLOBO’s attempts to contact, by telephone and e-mail.The Ministry of the Environment stated, through the press office, that Bill 8.107 / 2017 was prepared by ICMBio technicians and meets all environmental requirements.

Projeto do governo que reduz floresta no Pará deve beneficiar grileiros