A judge in Brazil has imposed fines totaling 4.2 million reais, or $762,000, against two beef producers and three ranchers for deforestation in a protected part of the Amazon Rainforest.
The Sept. 4 ruling was in response to illegal cattle ranching in the Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve in Rondônia state. The companies fined were Frigon and Distriboi, whose slaughterhouses took in cattle raised illegally inside the reserve.
Jaci Paraná is designated for sustainable extraction of resources such as latex and fruits, with only local rubber tappers allowed to live in the 197,000-hectare (488,000-acre) reserve. Since 1996, however, some 80% of the reserve has been deforested, largely for cattle pasture; today, an estimated 216,000 head of cattle graze there illegally. Families with legal rights to settle there have been repeatedly threatened and violently ousted from the land.
“The slaughterhouses benefited from the illegal exploitation of the area by purchasing cattle raised in the reserve, so they are indirectly responsible for the damage, as they encouraged environmental degradation,” Judge Inês Moreira da Costa wrote in her ruling.
She went on to stress the services provided by forests, including climate balance, biodiversity protection, and protecting the water supply. “The law mandates preservation for sustainable use, which did not occur in this case,” she added.
In separate ruling, a fourth rancher was fined 21.5 million reais ($3.9 million) for razing an additional 500 hectares (1,235 acres). Environmental fines in Brazil are rarely paid in full, if at all, but recent legal actions targeting slaughterhouses and illegal ranching could signal stronger enforcement efforts.
The court allocated 453,000 reais ($82,300) of the fines to reforest 232 hectares (573 acres) of degraded land. If the defendants do not comply, the ruling states, additional charges and damages may apply.
Frigon, headquartered less than 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve, owns the largest beef-processing unit in Brazil, with a capacity to slaughter 3,600 cows a day.
Neither Frigon nor Distriboi responded to Mongabay’s emailed requests for comment. The defendants may still appeal the judge’s decision.
As Brazil intensifies its crackdown on companies tied to illegal deforestation, this ruling could help pave the way for future legal action, including against JBS, the world’s largest meat-processing company.
“I feel proud to see the justice system defending nature,” Ivaneide Bandeira, coordinator of the profit Kanindé Association, a local nonprofit, told Mongabay in an audio message. “We are living through an environmental crisis that slaughterhouses, and even the state, are contributing toward.”
However, she said she has doubts about how effective the decision will be without the political will to remove the ranchers and cattle from the reserve and begin its restoration: “I need to see it to believe it.”
Banner image: Since 1996, around 80% of the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve in the state of Rondônia, Brazil, has been lost, mostly to illegal cattle ranches. Image by Mongabay.
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