Jaim Teixeira surveys his property near Trairão, Brazil from the back of a motorcycle, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved, sun-proof shirt to shield him from the jungle’s breathtaking heat.
It’s the end of the dry season and, like everything and everyone in this part of the Amazon, the lean, 51-year-old rancher is covered in a fine brick-red dust.
Nearby, a plume of smoke rises at the edge of the jungle canopy, heading skyward until it blurs into an indistinct haze. Burning trees crackle and spit. One falls with a whack. Then another. Teixeira lit the blaze the previous day to clear grazing land for his cattle. Brazil’s ranchers and rainforest frontiersmen call this limpeza. Cleaning. It’s the most expedient way to tame a jungle that stretches for thousands of miles in every direction.
“I know it’s illegal,” he said, gesturing toward the smoke. “If I had a salary, I wouldn’t need to do it. But how else can I feed my family?”
No license allows a person to burn the Amazon’s ancient trees. “For virgin forest,” Teixeira said, “you have to do it illegally.”
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More like this: - The Fifth Crime: Ecocide - link
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