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Ibama has also strengthened remote surveillance, where deforestation is detected through satellite imagery, according to Schmitt. For the entire country that is bigger than the contiguous U.S., there are just 700 agents, with 150 available for deployment. Lula has committed to restoring the workforce, but the number of Ibama’s enforcement agents remains at its lowest in 24 years. Many Ibama agents retired and weren’t replaced during Bolsonaro’s administration, reflecting his effort to defang environmental authorities. However, the continued shortage of personnel means the task hasn’t been easy, he said. “Bottom line, we are prioritizing environmental law enforcement,” Jair Schmitt, head of environmental protection at Ibama, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. The most accurate deforestation calculations come from another system called Prodes, with data released only annually. It is an initiative mainly focused on detecting real-time deforestation. Thursday’s deforestation data comes from a system called Deter, managed by the National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency. They were emboldened, and Amazon deforestation surged to a 15-year high. The former far-right leader weakened environmental authorities while his insistence on development of the Amazon region resonated with landgrabbers and farmers who had long felt maligned by environmental laws. Still, the data is an encouraging sign for Lula, who campaigned last year with pledges to rein in illegal logging and undo the environmental devastation during Bolsonaro’s term.

That is a fact: we reversed the curve deforestation isn’t increasing,” João Paulo Capobianco, the Environment Ministry’s executive secretary, said during a presentation in Brasilia.Ĭapobianco noted that full-year results will depend on a few challenging months ahead. “The effort of reversing the curve of growth has been reached. This year’s data includes a 41% plunge in alerts for June, which marks the start of the dry season when deforestation tends to jump. RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) - After four years of rising destruction in Brazil’s Amazon, deforestation dropped by 33.6% during the first six months of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s term, according to government satellite data released Thursday.įrom January to June the rainforest had alerts for possible deforestation covering 2,650 square kilometers (1,023 square miles), down from 4,000 square kilometers - an area the size of Rhode Island - during the same period last year under former President Jair Bolsonaro.