Xingu: deforestation reaches 200 trees per minute under Bolsonaro – 04/27/2023 – Environment

During the four years of Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) government, the Xingu basin, home to 26 indigenous peoples, recorded more than 730,000 hectares of deforested forest – an area almost the size of Greater São Paulo.

This is equivalent to an average of 200 trees cut down every minute, according to the study Xingu Sob Pressão, prepared by ISA (Instituto Socioambiental) based on satellite images and analysis of geographic data.

The region concentrates five of the six most deforested indigenous territories in the Legal Amazon: the territories of Apyterewa, Cachoeira Seca, Ituna-Itatá, Trincheira-Bacajá and Kayapó.

The region is the target of pressure from major works —the BR-163 highway, the Belo Monte power plant and the possible Ferrogrão (a railroad project to connect the Midwest to the rivers of the Amazon)— and the activities of environmental criminals, such as land grabbers. , miners and loggers.

In Apyterewa, in Pará, the leader Venatoa Parakanã, 32, says that the farms have already advanced so deep into the territory that there are even cattle living in one of the villages of his people. According to her, it is common for indigenous people to come across herds.

“The invaders are practically inside the Paredão village, and there are already families that are already leaving due to lack of food, hunting, fishing. polluted. There were only four, five families left. At the beginning of the year there were around 15”, says Venatoa, recently elected the first woman president of the Tatoa Association, of the Parakanã people.

She says she still suffers from resistance from men of her ethnic group and says that in June she will travel to Germany to participate in a United Nations event. Her intention is to expose the situation of the Xingu and seek resources to help protect the people.

“As a child, I had never seen farmers, we didn’t even hear about them. We would go with our parents to spend three weeks in the bush. Nowadays it’s very difficult to spend all that time in the bush. Farmers built villages with gas stations, cabarets, everything. There’s only one bank missing”, he says.

The main village is Renascer, created in 2016 within the territory and which has a wide structure and even a hotel.

Even though it was homologated in 2007, the TI (Indigenous Land) Apyterewa saw an exponential increase in destruction. In 2022, 8,916 hectares of forest were cut down, more than double the 4,228 in 2018. Currently, it is the most deforested territory in the Amazon.

Venatoa says that farmers have already offered money and trips to chiefs in the region so that the indigenous people stop offering resistance to the invaders. Not that they haven’t made threats.

The last one was at the beginning of the year. “We’re scared, we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. When we receive the threat, we wonder what could happen”, he adds.

The five most deforested indigenous lands in the Xingu basin account for 60% of the Amazon’s forest destruction. Between 2018 and 2022, tree felling grew by almost 40%.

In Ituna-Itatá, a small territory north of the Xingu that has not yet had its ordinance approved —currently, it has only one ordinance restricting use—, the rate grew 303% from 2021 to 2022 alone.

The territory is in the Altamira region, a region dominated by politicians linked to mining and illegal logging.

The Xingu basin, by the way, is surrounded by highways. According to the study, since 2018, more than 5,700 km of illegal branches have been opened, leaving the roads and entering the territories.

It is also in the Xingu region that the Belo Monte power plant is located. Its construction was the trigger for the departure of Marina Silva from the Lula government, in 2008. Back to the Ministry of the Environment, the renewal of the license for the hydroelectric plant will be the responsibility of the current government.

The study also highlights the situation of the Indigenous Land Trincheira-Bacajá, which currently has a flow of continuous invasions coming from the north, northwest and, mainly, the southeast.

Bebere Xikrin, 36, leader of the region and resident of Kenkro village, the southernmost of the territory, says that bridges used by criminals have even been destroyed – but that they were later rebuilt.

“Our fear is people attacking our village, because it is the closest, it is 3 km in a straight line from the areas of invasion. Last year we were victims of threats”, he says.

In the four years of the Bolsonaro government, TI saw 3,880 hectares deforested in the north and northeast; to the south, there were 5,561 hectares. In the southwest, the invasion began with an illegal road built in 2019 and already adds up to more than 1,000 hectares of cleared forest.

As shown to Sheet, in the region of São Félix do Xingu, precisely in the southwest of the TI, a Federal Police operation was denied support by the Armed Forces and was marked by turmoil and roadblocks by people who were in the territory; due to the lack of guidance to families, who stayed in neighboring villages; and the removal, without apprehension, of cattle used by land grabbers to dominate the region.

The indigenous land is one of seven in which the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court Luís Roberto Barroso ordered operations to be carried out to expel invaders.

The PF and the National Force promoted the removal of around 200 families of squatters from the territory and around 600 head of cattle.

“In the southeast of Trincheira-Bacajá, in the 1980s, 1990s, there were invaders. Since then, they have been removed and settled. worsening of the situation in the territory where his people live.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}