Though deforestation in Brazil is at its lowest point since the government began tracking 24 years ago, certain unscrupulous loggers have resorted to bribing and bullying locals for access to raw materials, according to the BBC.
Though deforestation in Brazil is at its lowest point since the government began tracking 24 years ago, certain unscrupulous loggers have resorted to bribing and bullying locals for access to raw materials, according to the BBC.
It's akin to laundering. In local parlance, the loggers are "heating" the wood-finding ways to turn illegal wood into a legal product. To legally harvest the land in Brazil, a landowner must inventory the parcel, draw up harvesting and reforestation plans, and apply to the government for authorization. In "heating" cases, loggers bribe and bully landowners to draw up the documentation. "The loggers then use the plans to give a legal cover story for timber they have logged illegally from a different area," the BBC wrote. The Brazilian government declined to comment on the matter when questioned by the BBC.
The Brazilian government offers settlers in the Amazon training to run their own logging operations; however, settlers are meeting resistance from logging companies. Some locals even told the BBC they had received death threats.
