HE’s known as the King of Deforestation and is thought to be responsible for 20 per cent of recent destruction in the Brazilian Amazon.

Ezequiel Antonio Castanha was arrested this weekend for operating a network that illegally seized government lands, cleared them and sold them to cattle grazers.

This relentless destruction of rainforest is part of the reason Brazil is locked in its worst drought in nearly a century. Households are running out of water for bathing and brushing teeth as reservoirs run dry. Schools are serving students sandwiches instead of meals to save using crockery that would need to be washed.

Castanha’s gang is thought to have cleared 90 square kilometres of rainforest, a swathe of land bigger than Hong Kong Island.

He will face charges for money laundering and forging documents as well as illegal deforestation, and could be sentenced to up to 46 years in prison, according to the country’s environmental protection agency (Ibama).

Ibama’s head said he hoped “land-grabber” Castanha’s arrest would “contribute significantly to controlling deforestation in the region”, which he said was like the Wild West.

As much as 4848 sq km of rainforest was destroyed between August 2013 and July 2014. Trees that used to soak up rain and release it into dams are gone, and water sources lie parched and cracked.

In Sao Paulo, Bazil’s biggest city, citizens are staging protests over the water shortage, as authorities warn that the rationing could escalate to a dramatic five days off, two days on system.

But in the Amazon, environmental police are locked in a bitter war with loggers.

As agencies become better at detection, using satellite imagery and helicopters to track and stop criminal gangs, they are employing new tactics, tossing molotov cocktails out of planes, employing local informants and operating under the cover of cloud, the New York Times reported. Last May, environmental police were cornered and attacked at their hotel. Recently, a 45-year-old woman said she had received death threats from loggers who accused her of being an informant for the environmental police.

Castanha’s gang operated near a highway in Para state, EFE news agency reported, where it was logging close to 3400 hectares of jungle a week. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has called for the imprisonment of nine gang members as well as ringleader Castanha, who it says owes the environment ministry $20.8 million in fines.

But Castanha is unrepentant. “I don’t regret clearing land,” he told journalists last June. “If we did not clear there would be no Brazil.”

The Amazon extends over 6.1 million square kilometres, with more than 60 per cent of the forest within Brazil. But nearly a fifth of it, an area almost the size of Germany, has been cleared in the past 40 years.

There is debate over whether deforestation is slowing or will continue to grow. But scientists say deforestation limits the reach of vapour clouds, or “flying rivers”, which deliver rain to southern and central Brazil, according to The Atlantic.

In 2009, Antonio Nobre, one of Brazil’s leading climate scientists, warned that without the “flying rivers”, the area that produces 70 per cent of South America’s GNP would be desert, the Climate News Network reported.

The Amazon holds one-third of the planet’s biodiversity and is considered one of the world’s most important natural defences against climate change because it absorbs huge amounts of carbon dioxide. But rainforest clearing is responsible for about 75 per cent of Brazil’s emissions as vegetation is burned and felled trees rot.

Can Castanha’s arrest stem the tide?