APUÍ, Brazil — A vigorous and incredibly lucrative trade in land for livestock is fueling the fires that have devastated that Amazon and caused anBuzzFeed News toured one of the areas worst affected by fires in the Amazon and found that, according to farmers, one hectare of land cleared for cattle is changing hands for 20 times the price of the same area with standing forest.
“The bushel of forest is cheap, the pasture is not. And now the deforestation has increased, the burning has increased, because many people are coming from abroad, who are selling their farm in [the neighboring state of] Rondônia and coming here,” said rancher Demésio Souza da Luz. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has criticized environmentalists, vowed to stop new areas of rainforest and indigenous lands from being protected, and attacked other countries for their “colonial” interest in the Amazon. When this devastating round of fires broke out, he initially — and wrongly — blamed NGOs for starting them.
"Fire is a common practice for grassland weed control, but allied to this, there has been an advance in deforestation,” he said.One case under investigation involves a fuel tanker arriving in the municipality, followed by two buses filled with people and chainsaws. First the chainsaws brought down the trees, then after a wait of a few days as the logs dried, fuel was scattered in the area, and the fires started.
Sancler said he has lost thousands of hectares of land to other farmers in territorial disputes, due to a lack of legal certainty about who owns the land.