The Brazilian government blocked 545 rural properties in the Amazonian state of Pará from selling crops and livestock both domestically and internationally, citing illegal deforestation, according to a May 6 announcement by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
The announcement marks one of Brazil’s largest uses of remote sensing to sanction agriculture activity associated with deforestation. The move signals a shift toward more aggressive antideforestation tactics. Instead of blocking, or embargoing, properties flagged for deforestation one by one, the government used satellite monitoring alerts to issue hundreds of penalties across a wide area all at once.
Most of the land now barred from markets lies near Castelo dos Sonhos district in Altamira, a municipality currently ranked as one of Brazil’s most violent. The region has seen multiple execution-style killings of environmental defenders and has high rates of deforestation.
“[The deforested areas] are embargoed with the aim of preventing new infractions, safeguarding environmental recovery and ensuring administrative processes see real results,” Jair Schmitt, the director of environmental protection at IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, wrote in the order.
The 615 ranchers and farmers named in the order will have until June 6 to remove all livestock from the land.