Army and police investigate unexplained incident in which scientists tasked with fighting deforestation and illegal mining in the Amazon died

Investigation is underway into an unexplained plane crash in the Amazon that left four dead, including members of Brazil’s special environmental protection forces.



Environmental analysts Olavo Perim Galvão and Alexandre Rochinski died alongside administrative technician Sebastião Lima Ferreira Junior and the aircraft’s pilot, Marcos Costa Jardim. Another analyst, Lazlo Macedo de Carvalho, survived the crash on 3 July and is receiving treatment for burns in Rio de Janeiro.

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Brazil’s Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources said the agents died while on a mission to combat deforestation and illegal gold extraction. Ibama agents are trained scientists who go into areas of conflict heavily armed, often in the face of death threats or violent resistance.

Olavo’s family believe his role as an environmentalist cost him his life. “Olavo was a wonderful human being,” his cousin Leonardo Galvão told the Guardian. “Olavo died trying to save the Amazon. He believed that he was making a difference, and so did we. He had a dream and was on a mission, and his mission killed him.”

His friends and relatives have been planting a forest in his native state of Espírito Santo to commemorate his life and work.

In Brazil, the Amazon and other environmental resources are governed by overlapping sets of regulations and security forces. Ibama agents answer to the federal government and ultimately the president, enforcing laws against direct environmental destruction.



They operate in dangerous territory and are often hated by the country’s numerous illegal deforesters, who often put cattle on the land or convert it to soya farms.



In recent years, Ibama agents have complained they are fighting a losing battle, as they lack the resources to fly above enough of the country’s vast territory – Brazil is twice the size of the EU – looking for holes in the forest. They complain that, even when they can catch criminals in the act, the penalties they attempt to apply get held up in the courts.



A recent Guardian report claimed Brazil is “deliberately losing the battle against deforestation” after the lobby for soy and beef production grew politically stronger even as the country moved to the right and the economy declined.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deforestation is seen over Maranhão state in north-east Brazil. Photograph: Fábio Nascimento/Greenpeace

In 2015, a Los Angeles Times investigation accompanied Olavo and his colleagues as they worked in the state of Maranhão. The group described how their helicopter had been shot at from the ground, and how civilians caught speaking with them or reporting crimes risked targeted assassination.



They said criminals unconcerned with saving the Amazon continued with illegal deforestation operations, using violence in the process, because it makes economic sense under the existing system and they are unlikely to get caught.



The small plane, chartered by the Brazilian army, crashed over the northern state of Roraima, which borders Venezuela and Guyana. According to Ibama, it had been heading to the Yanomami indigenous reserve. Large sections of Brazil are officially designated as protected indigenous land, but, like the regulations prohibiting deforestation, these rules are often ignored in practice, with reserves invaded for profit.



According to local news reports, the men’s bodies were badly charred. Investigations by the Brazilian armed forces and federal police are ongoing.

