Report: Brazil authorities pay no mind to deforestation

By FABIANO MAISONNAVE

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Illegal loggers have destroyed some 18,500 square kilometers (7,100 square miles) of public forests over the past six years in the Brazilian Amazon. Yet the nation’s Federal Police mounted only seven operations to investigate this massive loss, according to a new study on environmental crime in the region. In a systemic problem of omission, the police have ignored illegal tree cutting on “unallocated” public land — forest that lies neither within national parks nor in designated Indigenous territory.