It was supposed to be a good-news story out of the damaged Amazon rainforest: a project that replanted hundreds of thousands of trees in an illegally deforested nature reserve in Brazil.
I know your comment was light-hearted in nature, but I’d like to point out from the article:
"Investigators say the Rio Preto-Jacunda reserve is >bordered by ranches with a record of environmental crimes, >including repeated encroachments on the reserve.
Razing protected rainforest for pasture is an illegal but >lucrative business in Brazil, the world’s top beef exporter.
The crime often hits remote, hard-to-police nature reserves, >overlapping with other organized criminal activities >destroying the Amazon, including illegal logging and gold >mining."
These are people looking to make a buck with a ‘fuck you, got mine’ attitude. And it’s happening all over the world in grey-areas with regards to law enforcement. Burning down stuff is one of the favoured methods, especially if you can bribe officials to say that it was an accident (as does not seem to be the case here, however so props for that for what it’s worth).
The article also mentions death threats by the ones doing the arson towards those against their interests. People are the reason we can’t have nice things.
As nice as it sounds, I don’t think it’s feasible. The Amazon is absolutely massive and not very populated. The logistics of keeping armed guards all around the protected areas sounds like a nightmare. The only way I can see deforestation actually stopping is if cattle, soy and wood stop being lucrative businesses somehow.
I mean, couldn’t policies be attempted to at least make the business less lucrative in protected areas specifically? For example, if a protected area burns down, having a policy of occasionally inspecting that bit of burned land and confiscating any cattle found grazing there, to make illegally cleared land more risky to use?
That’s probably closer to what they actually try to do, which is much more reasonable but still requires a lot of resources. The problem is, there’s a lot of money behind these criminals and not a lot of political good will towards preservation (right-wingers here basically think the forest stands in the way of our progress, so less environmental protections = more jobs and development, somehow) so getting funds to protect our forests is usually an uphill battle.
I guess the only real change we could effect is if “bee from Brazil” was flat out banned in a lot of western countries. Could not be imported. But heh, as if the industry big wigs who could not care any less (they’ll all be dead from old age by the time this truly has significant big fallout so they don’t care, naturally) will do that.
But yeah, need to remove the market to truly impact this, beyond making it illegal in the first place.
I know your comment was light-hearted in nature, but I’d like to point out from the article:
These are people looking to make a buck with a ‘fuck you, got mine’ attitude. And it’s happening all over the world in grey-areas with regards to law enforcement. Burning down stuff is one of the favoured methods, especially if you can bribe officials to say that it was an accident (as does not seem to be the case here, however so props for that for what it’s worth).
The article also mentions death threats by the ones doing the arson towards those against their interests. People are the reason we can’t have nice things.
Yeah those ranchers should be executed.
This is a case of ‘if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.’
It’s really fucking horrendous in reality. And I don’t expect Brazil to have the means or inclination to deal with this appropriately either.
Do the same thing they do for poachers, have armed guards that shoot to kill and ask questions later.
As nice as it sounds, I don’t think it’s feasible. The Amazon is absolutely massive and not very populated. The logistics of keeping armed guards all around the protected areas sounds like a nightmare. The only way I can see deforestation actually stopping is if cattle, soy and wood stop being lucrative businesses somehow.
I mean, couldn’t policies be attempted to at least make the business less lucrative in protected areas specifically? For example, if a protected area burns down, having a policy of occasionally inspecting that bit of burned land and confiscating any cattle found grazing there, to make illegally cleared land more risky to use?
That’s probably closer to what they actually try to do, which is much more reasonable but still requires a lot of resources. The problem is, there’s a lot of money behind these criminals and not a lot of political good will towards preservation (right-wingers here basically think the forest stands in the way of our progress, so less environmental protections = more jobs and development, somehow) so getting funds to protect our forests is usually an uphill battle.
I guess the only real change we could effect is if “bee from Brazil” was flat out banned in a lot of western countries. Could not be imported. But heh, as if the industry big wigs who could not care any less (they’ll all be dead from old age by the time this truly has significant big fallout so they don’t care, naturally) will do that.
But yeah, need to remove the market to truly impact this, beyond making it illegal in the first place.
You’d think. On paper, it’s the logical response. Irl, anything not on the market is going on the black market