From the air, the earth's green lung looks like an endless unspoiled primeval world. But the greed for raw materials has left deep wounds in the Amazon rainforest. Ana Rafaela D'Amico, the youngest national park director in Brazil, has declared war on the plundering.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Ana Rafaela is looking for an illegal tin mine which is reported to be hidden under a canopy of leaves at a river. Apparently, there are at least 50 workers ransacking the National Park, an ecological catastrophe. Although she has the exact GPS coordinates of the mine, there's nothing to be seen. However, before she can investigate the anonymous tip-off on the ground, she has to take a picture from the air. [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE], the mine workers, could be armed.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Their fuel is running out. It's starting to rain. They have to call off the search. The aim of the reconnaissance mission is to prepare a large scale police operation which Ana Rafaela would carry out in the National Park in the next two weeks. The aim is to drive poachers, wood thieves, and illegal settlers out of the nature reserve.
On the way back to the state capital, Porto Velho, the scale of the tragedy of the Amazon rainforest becomes clear. This state alone, Rondonia, has lost around 40% of its forests in the last 10 years. The hidden treasures of the rain forest, gold, tin, precious woods, attract the poorest wretches.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
That's why it's so important to investigate every tip-off thoroughly. Even though they didn't find any proof of the suspected illegal tin mine from the air, Ana Rafaela will scour the area on the ground again with her team.
SIVAM, the air surveillance headquarters in the state capital, Porto Velho. The raids in the rain forest are, above all, a logistical challenge. Ana Rafaela's team consists of around 20 people. Geologists, biologists, environmental police, all young and highly motivated. They'll be traveling through the ancient forest for two weeks. 2,600 kilometers of rivers and jungle tracks lie ahead of them. Armed federal police accompany them to protect them violent poachers and woo thieves.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
But she won't be fully cut off from the headquarters in the 800,000 hectares of the Campos Amazonicos National Park. Ana Rafaela can send out an emergency call at any time via satellite.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Shortly before departure, Ana Rafaela is called to the high security wing. An official who analyzes aerial images has discovered something in the pictures by the Brazilian AWACS airplanes, and he wants to tell her about it.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
The convoy is on the road for about 300 kilometers before it reaches the area in question. Ever since the '60s, two million hectares of forest have been burned or cut down every year. At first, Brazil began conquering the enormous primeval forest in order to raise national living standards. People without land settled in a land without people, built roads, dams and towns.
Although around 600 illegal wood transporters are seized every year, more than a hectare of forest still dies every hour. Ana Rafaela wants to investigate the illegal logging seen on the satellite image right at the start of the operation.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Just recently there was a rain forest here. Now there's a field of destruction. First, the enormous precious wood trees are uprooted, and then the less valuable trees are felled and subsequently burned. This is how the rainforest dies, hectare by hectare. Two federal police officers stay back at the access road in case the plunderers try to escape. As so often happens when the authorities turn up, the owner isn't there. After an hour of waiting in the scorching midday sun, Ana Rafaela decides to check herself.
After just a few hundred meters, an older man comes towards them.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Ana Rafaela suspects that Mr. Joao is a so-called orange, a front man. Since small areas of land can be occupied illegally by individuals in Brazil, large cattle breeders often send day laborers a to settle smaller plots and deforest the land. Once the land has been cleared, the cattle breeders buy it back from them. This way, bit by bit, they collect huge areas of land for cattle breeding and meat production.
As a small farmer, Mr. Joao would have been allowed to clear 20% of his land, but only with a permit from the authorities, and only outside the protected area.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
The ancient forest that Mr. Joao has cleared will never recover, that much is clear. It is also clear that he will never pay the 180,000 Euro fine. He can appeal and delay the proceedings. But for fear of his life, he will never betray the large landowner behind him.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Protecting a national park with 800,000 hectares of land is a noble task, in which Ana Rafaela cannot always rely on help from above. Just one week before the Campos Amazonicos was declared a nature protection area in 2006, it was divided up. Officially, in order to grow rice in part of the land. And now there's a road running through the savanna which is used to smuggle drugs from Colombia to Brazil.
The team's next task is to track down illegal wood transport in the area and set up road blocks. To do so, they have to venture into the lions den, Guata. Guata means eight in the local Indian language. It is the village with the highest concentration of contract killers in the whole of Brazil. Just this morning, a man's head was half blown off with a shotgun because of a dispute about a domestic pig. Guata is a lawless place, but with a good communication system.
The drivers of the wood transporters smelled a rat. No truck is in sight for miles. There's a feeling of lethargy about the place. The residents of Guata have no time for the conservationists who have suddenly turned up from the capital.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
The operation in Guata turned out to be a fruitless expedition.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
As soon as Ana Rafaela's troop withdraws, life goes back to normal. The people in Guata feel that the conservationists curtail their freedom, and limit the few opportunities they have to earn a living. Yet Ana Rafaela knows that she is dependent on the help of the population.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Ana Rafaela no longer believes in setting up road blocks and turning up unexpectedly in villages. Instead, she wants to explore smaller timber routes in the hope of catching thieves red handed. They know from informers that there is an illegal deforestation in this area. After just a few hundred meters, the first signs appear.
[SOUND OF CHAINSAW]
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
They come across children who are obviously watching over the supplies. Then a day laborer. The policemen have found a second man.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Oziel has occupied the land for five years. He doesn't have any papers for it. He's not allowed to fell trees without authorization. But he can only keep cattle and feed his family if he has cleared land. In addition, Oziel's land lies in the buffer zone on the edge of the National Park. That will increase the fine he can expect dramatically.
The people are not interested in the officials from the city and their laws. For Oziel and his wife, all that matters is what they can give their children to eat.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Ana Rafaela knows that 200,000 Euros is an inconceivable sum for these people. But she also knows that not much of Amazonia and will remain if she lets off all the people she feels sorry for.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
When flying over the forest Ana Rafaela spots illegal landing strips again and again. The secret drug trafficking locations are also registered by the air surveillance teams. But doing anything about them is difficult. By the time the authorities get to the sites, the smugglers have long since disappeared again. Today they want to investigate a report of one of these landing strips.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
The next day, the team splits up. Together with the federal police, Renato will look for the drug dealers' illegal landing strip, which is supposed to be hidden in the savanna of the Campos Amazonicos National Park. They can only monitor the situation in the National Park twice a year. The budget doesn't allow for any more. There are hardly any passable roads, so they mostly travel by river.
Meanwhile, Ana Rafaela travels up the Rio Madeirinha with the environmental police. They will be on the river for three days. Their task is to track illegal fisherman and poachers, put up prohibition signs, and above all else, be alert.
When Ana Rafaela took over the National Park here a few years ago, the fish stocks of the Rio Madeirinha were severely depleted. Professional fishermen with nets and cooling equipment had been catching anything they could. But since the water core system in the park was placed under nature protection, the fishes can spawn again undisturbed.
They patrol the river the whole day, but don't see any animals or people. No woodcutters, no poachers, no fishermen. Just butterflies. Then, quite unexpectedly, they discover a boat near the river bank.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
The fishing permit would have cost the two man 60 reals , only 20 Euros. But it takes two days to get to the town where the permits are issued.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
When caught, again and again poachers and wood thieves have claimed that they didn't know they were doing something illegal. That's why Ana Rafaela has ordered signs to be put up on the river banks prohibiting entry to the park without a permit. She focuses on educating people, and despite all the setbacks, ensuring the health of the population.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
But Ana Rafaela's paradise is in danger. Three new power plants are planned in the state of Rondonia. Large parts of the National Park will have to be flooded in preparation. All Ana Rafaela's attempts to secure concessions in such projects have so far failed.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Campos Amazonicos. 15,000 years ago, after the last ice age, an isolated savanna landscape emerged in the middle of the rainforest, wi flora and fauna usually only found much further south in the Amazon region. A rainforest couldn't grow on the sandy ground, and of course you can't grow rice here either, as the government apparently once planned to do. The team led by R is en route here. The area is ideal for the drugs mafia to hide landing strips.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
First, they find fresh tire tracks. Then one of the trackers discovers something else.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Just a soil sample, apparently, and absolutely harmless. They won't get much further on the sandy track either. The tire tracks have stopped. At about four in the afternoon, they call off the search. It doesn't make sense to continue if they can't reach the landing strip hidden deep in the savanna before darkness sets in. Once again, the conservationists fail because of the sheer size and inaccessibility of their nature reserve.
Ana Rafaela and her team cannot withdraw to the safe camp. Out here, they are left to their own devices. During survival training, they learned how to build bridges and pull cars out of mud pools in no time at all. Most of them had to survive 40 days in the jungle with just one shot of ammunition. Just as dusk falls, they reach a sandy bank. Here they will set up their night camp.
The environmental police pride themselves on their mastery of the outdoors, but they also know that there are many invisible dangers in the jungle. Ana Rafaela learned everything she knows about the forest from the environmental police, she says. She copes well in the outdoors, but life on the edge of civilization presents her with other challenges she didn't expect.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
And what does one talk about around the campfire, surrounded by pumas, jaguars, and alligators? Stories from "The Jungle Book."
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
The journey back to base and the rest of the team takes nine hours. Nine hours in which anyone who can catches up on lost sleep. On the banks, Renato is waiting with some disastrous news. A few days ago, a judge issued a temporary injunction decreeing that people could settle in the National Park as of immediately.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
The Ca Amazonicos National Park used to be considered the most problematic protected area in the whole of Amazonia. The fact that that is no longer true is purely down to Ana Rafaela's efforts. And that is now at risk.
The next morning, they set off to the illegal settlement. The temporary injunction by the judge could trigger a rush of settlers occupying the park in order to fell trees, hunt and build houses, just like in the gold rush. Ana Rafaela knows this road. It reaches almost 30 kilometers into the park. Just two years ago, she made it impassable, and had wooden barracks and bridges demolished. But already, new wooden huts have sprung up on the side of the road.
Just two days ago, the federal police were here. They met an unarmed man who was watching over a large quantity of groceries. Now it's just dogs there. Seems as if it's only just been deserted.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
A shot was fired from the shotgun.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Fresh food, cooking utensils and supplies for at least a dozen people. But they have all vanished without a trace.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
There's nothing hidden in the nooks and crannies of the hut. Nothing that would reveal the identity of the people. Ana Rafaela suspects that it was forced laborers.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Where there are slaves, there are also guards, and they were well armed. The police officers find a lot of knives and ammunition.
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Weapons and logging tools are important pieces of evidence for Ana Rafaela. Down the line, they provide tangible proof against the settlers. More and more new huts appear at the end of the road. The forest fires have destroyed large areas. Obviously the settlers wanted to destroy as much as possible as quickly as possible. They wanted a fait accompli.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
But they don't find anyone. Nature protection in Brazil is and remains a fight against an invisible enemy. Recently, they found a drawing of a blonde woman with a knife in her head on the wall of a sawmill. Ana Rafaela knows who it's supposed to be.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
Even if Ana Rafaela can appeal against the permission given by the judge to settle in the park, the damage already done is irreversible. Which makes it all the more important to protect the areas of the park that are intact, and to nip any possible environmental crimes in the bud. Ana Rafaela has to investigate another important lead, the hidden tin mine on the river, which she already looked for by helicopter but didn't find.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
They're looking for an approach to the river where the mine is thought to be. All of a sudden, a farmer boy appears on a horse. He is accompanied by his father, and he knows the area well. Two months ago, he observed some people who wanted to go to the river.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
The path obviously hasn't been used for a while. After a long march in the sun, they finally reach the river. There it lies, in unspoiled beau No water pollution, no torn up ground, no mine in sight. No sign of ore extraction. So far, the unknown intruders have only taken soil samples. Ana Rafaela has a sign put up straight away to make sure it stays that way. For her, this is an important confirmation of her work. At least it's one less battle in the fight for Amazonia, and reason to hope.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
And that is something that Ana Rafaela D'Amico will never do.
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