Capivara Filo: Bolsonaristas use case against Ibama – 04/30/2023 – Environment

The repercussions of the Filó capybara case also reached Bolsonarist social networks, driven by fake news, and culminated in the invasion of an Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) headquarters this weekend.

According to the president of the institute, Rodrigo Agostinho, the invasion puts endangered animals at risk, which are in place for rehabilitation. For him, the story has been used as a response to operations to combat illegal timber and cattle in the Amazon.

“The Bolsonarist network is using this situation to attack us,” he says to Sheet.

“They are attacking Ibama because we have many actions in Amazonas, embargoing deforested areas, seizures of cattle in indigenous lands, in conservation units. This case ended up serving to try to disqualify the work”, he completes.

According to him, the animal would be returned to its natural habitat shortly after the May 1 holiday.

The capybara Filó was apprehended by the institute last Thursday (27). She lived with youtuber Agenor Tupinambá, who was successful on social media with the animal. He was charged because Brazilian law prohibits “improper exploitation of wild animals to generate content on social networks”.

Since then, the case has gained repercussions. This weekend, it reached profiles such as activist Luísa Mell and bolsonaristas like Mário Frias, former secretary of Culture for Jair Bolsonaro (PL), and deputies Carla Zambelli (PL-SP) and Bia Kicis (PL-DF ).

Since Saturday (29), the day on which Justice granted an injunction allowing Agenor to visit the animal, demonstrators have been demonstrating in front of Cetas (Screening Center for Wild Animals) of Ibama, in Manaus.

One of the leaders of the movement is state deputy Joana Darc (União Brasil), who recorded lives and videos calling people to the protests and entered Cetas together with the youtuber, still on Saturday, when many profiles started to propagate that the decision was to return the animal, which until then was not true.

This Sunday (30), when a new injunction determined the return of the capybara to Agenor, the deputy invaded Cetas and verbally attacked Ibama employees, who registered the case in a police report.

“There is not a hospital for visiting patients. We still have the issue that it was the offender visiting the object of the infringement”, says Agostinho, who also claims that he will appeal the decision.

Videos show the congresswoman invading Cetas, threatening police and public servants and throwing a key, supposedly from IBAMA, into a thicket. In her videos, she also claims that she found expired medicines and also vaccines.

The president of Ibama rebuts, saying that the drugs were for disposal and that Ibama does not vaccinate wild animals.

“We have in that unit, in the process of rehabilitation, some marmosets from Manaus, a species endemic to the region and one of the ten most endangered monkeys in the world. They are there to be returned to nature and they suffered with the stress. That space it’s not made to have a crowd of people screaming around, much less inside”, says Agostinho.

The president claims that the Bolsonaro administration scrapped several centers across the country and that the institute even plans to renovate the Manaus unit, in addition to reopening the Belém unit, to expand the service to wild animals.

According to him, this year alone, the 25 Cetas units in the country have already received around 15,000 animals, of which just over a third have already been returned to the wild.

“It is striking to see that animal protectors are defending the person and not the well-being of the animal. In the networks, they are not concerned with a suitable destination for the capybara, with where it will be released, if we find a family of capybaras for it” , it says.

Risk for animals

On his social networks, Agenor posted his routine with Filó. He, who, according to his posts, lives on a farm, claims that he took care of her like indigenous people in villages do with puppies in the jungle.

There are scenes of him putting makeup on the animal, taking a bath (apparently with shampoo) with the animal. He also appears with other animals: sloths, boa constrictors, floodplain parrots or pacas, for example.

“He fed a baby sloth with fruit, and the sloth does not eat fruit, and then the animal ended up dying. That is not a case of animals inside a village, the capybara was being raised indoors. I have no doubt that he liked her, but you can’t normalize the excessive humanization of a wild animal, it crossed all limits”, says Agostinho.

The president of Ibama says that, in recent days, he has registered over 20 cases of people using wild animals to get engagement on social networks.