Nature Warriors E-Book

Jorge Pontes

• Herausgeber: mapa lab
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 222

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

On his first nocturnal mission in 1989, searching river boats for an expected drug haul, Federal Police agent Jorge Pontes heard something he would never forget: "—It's nothing, just turtles!" Over a hundred freshwater turtles, one bigger than the other, packed into the cargo hold of a fishing boat. For that team of agents, so focused on its mission to find and seize a few dozen kilos of cocaine paste, a hull-load of smuggled turtles meant "nothing". But for Jorge Pontes, that scene not only raised a thousand questions about the remit of the Federal Police, but was the spark that would lead, some years later, to his formal submission of a proposal for the creation of a unit specializing in crimes against the nation's flora and fauna. This proposal gave rise to the Division for the Repression of Crimes Against the Environment and Natural Heritage (DMAPH), signed into law on December 13, 2001. In Nature Warriors, Jorge Pontes recounts some crucial episodes that led to the division's creation and some of the mega-operations launched during his tenure. Looking back over his career, the author draws a vast panorama of the environmental issue in Brazil and the fundamental role the Federal Police has played in bringing environmental crimes to justice.

Leseprobe

Copyright © Jorge Pontes, 2022

All rights reserved.

Original Title: Guerreiros da natureza : a história do combate aos crimes ambientais na Polícia Federal.

Design by Sérgio Campante

Cover Image: Digital illustration by Sérgio Campante on images of Cesar Luiz Leite (Wikimedia), Simon-Shim (unsplash), Ren-Ran (Unsplash) e Engin-Akyurt (Unsplash)

Proofreading: Yedda Araújo

Printed in Brazil by Trio Gráfica Digital.

Conversion to ebook: Cumbuca Studio

e-ISBN: 978-65-86367-73-7

[email protected] | www.mapalab.com.br

/amapalab     @amapalab

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

1 • They’re Not Just Turtles: a proposal to FIGHT AGAINST environmental crime

2 • The Long Road to the Creation of DMAPH>

3 • The Mega-operations Phase and Operation Pindorama

4 • Biopiracy and Operation “Roloff Effect”

5 • The Amazon, Paranoia about International Designs on the Forest, the Arms Trade and Fake News

6 • DMAPH’s Golden Year

7 • After DMAPH: the Environment Remains a Priority

8 • The FP Abroad: International Cooperation in the Fight Against Environmental Crime

9 • A Backward Slide 20 Years On: the Ministry of Deforestation

10 • Ten Paths for the Future: Lessons From a Long Road Traveled

Appendix • The Structure and Functioning of the Federal Police

Acknowledgements

To my dear mother, Norma Barbosa Pontes, to whom I owe my existence, for all the support and unconditional love she has given me throughout my life.

FOREWORD

Fernando gabeira

This book tells the story of the awakening of an environmental awareness within the Brazilian Federal Police and the effort to build a structure to enable the force to combat natural devastation.

It’s a fascinating tale, because it begins with a stop-and-search that unveils a boatload of live turtles captured for illegal sale. In fact, when this cargo was discovered aboard a fishing boat on the Rio Negro, the police were out there looking for drugs, not wildlife.

From turtles to hyacinth macaws, parakeets, or spiders, whatever was being trafficked, the unit’s beginnings were focused on the defense of Brazil’s fauna. That alone is extraordinarily important in the country’s environmental history, especially looking back through the lens of a Coronavirus pandemic that claimed the lives of six million people worldwide, roughly seven hundred thousand of whom were Brazilian. Back then, when it all began, wildlife protection was not the big theme it is today, but the simple fact that we started policing what was being yanked from deep forest may well have spared humanity from other pandemics.

Beginnings are never easy. In a nation with as much rampant crime as ours, is protecting fauna and nature really a priority? Thankfully, the answer was yes, despite all the prejudice with which Jorge Ponte’s proposal was initially received, not least by the entrenched machismo of much of Brazilian society. The overwhelmingly female presence in the first environmental crime groups is no coincidence.

What seems to have injected much-needed impetus into the initiative was the number of international contacts the author could draw from, not only in North America, but also in Europe and elsewhere. The store the rest of the world was placing on the theme was a clear indication of the urgency behind it, perhaps especially so in Brazil, given its standing as the most biodiverse country in the world.

As the project unfolded, new perspectives arose. The defense of the nation’s fauna began to shape the concept of a modality of crime that is still not very well formulated in the Brazilian legal framework. The encounter between human knowledge and the bounty of the forests engenders vast economic potential, but national rights and the traditional knowledge of native communities must be respected. One of the most emblematic cases was that of a German who collected and smuggled Brazilian spiders, because he knew how potentially important their venom peptides are as drug candidates. For some, combating this kind of crime might look like biodiversity protectionism rather than protection. “The spiders are ours,” wrote Roberto Campos, tongue in cheek.1 But like all intelligent people, Roberto Campos is entitled to the odd moment of stupidity. A staunch defender of free trade, he saw nothing wrong with removing these spiders from nature and selling them for profit. It never even crossed his mind that unregulated exportation of wildlife might involve such a thing as biosecurity. In the Amazon today, there are Brazilians who legally breed poisonous snakes, especially the jararaca pit viper, in order to sell their venom to the pharmaceutical industry.

From biopiracy, the theme fans out further. There was a time when the feathers of Brazilian birds and assorted parts of wild animals were exported on a large scale under the label of Indigenous art. However, it was just predatory commerce by another name, all with the collusion of members of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). Today, the seized material is precisely where it ought to be: in a museum.

Over the course of this book, we see just how deeply the agents had to study and broaden their knowledge, realizing as they did that certain modalities of specialized environmental crime need the aid of science in order to thrive. A good example was Operation Nautilus, on which the team had to ascertain precisely which coral species were being removed from the reefs along the Northeastern coast. Likewise, knowledge of Brazilian hardwoods proved key to combatting the sacking of the Amazon and Atlantic Forest.

Unfortunately, the advances made by the Federal Police were not accompanied by the Brazilian Armed Forces, which remain bound to the dogmas of Western civilization that not only see nature as something to be mastered by technology, but traditional and native cultures as outmoded ways of life that need to disappear into a wider hegemony.

Though the fruit of the unit’s work can still be felt in the Amazon, it now finds itself floundering. Some leading figures in the Federal Environmental Police, such as Alexandre Saraiva and Franco Perazzoni, were removed precisely because they were too competent. The FP’s modernization is being threatened by the backward outlook of a government that is incapable of seeing the best and most productive way of using our environmental wealth.

Those who visit the Fernando de Noronha archipelago do so because they like a taste of paradise. But perhaps they don’t know that the magnificent work done there is the result of a structure, however minimalist, that ensures the preservation of this invaluable ecological sanctuary.

Jorge Pontes’ book is an excellent opportunity for Brazil to understand its own grandeur and recognize the pivotal work of those who have endeavored to protect it. It is also a platform from which we can fly higher and further—especially now that environmental awareness is spreading globally—and aim for a more ambitious nature-protection and sustainable-development program.

As I see it, Brazil’s future hangs on this dilemma: we can stay in the shadows or return to the lights that have guided us through the early decades of this century, especially when we simultaneously succeeded in curbing deforestation and driving wildcat miners off Indigenous Territories.

The task will be even more difficult now. Organized crime from further south has infiltrated the Amazon and crime there has become more lucrative, powerful and sophisticated. Today, deforestation, illegal mining, wildlife and drug trafficking are all interconnected, and we are losing control over the Amazon the same way we lost the shantytowns of Rio to drug gangs and militias.

Nothing is impossible if we revive the spirit that was kindled by those turtles, advanced through the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge, and was galvanized through international ties.

We’ll get there, and hopefully then we’ll know how to honor our pioneers.

1 Roberto Campos (1917-2001), Brazilian diplomat, author, and politician.

One night in August 1989, a Boston whaler zipped along the Rio Negro, buffeted by wind and rain. A gift from the US Coast Guard, the boat had all cushioned seating, fiber-glass bodywork, and aerodynamic contours, and it had twin Mercury 300 hp motors to back up the bling. Out there on the forest waterways, it was in a league of its own. Next to nothing could outrun it during a river chase—and they were quite common back in the day.

I was one of the twelve federal agents who had completed the maritime policing course just a fortnight earlier, and so was licensed to pilot a vessel in that category. By some whim of fate, on that rainy Saturday night, none of the other graduates—all more experienced agents than I—were on hand, so the duty sergeant asked me to captain the Whaler on a stop-and-search operation. In a sense, my fortuitous presence on that night’s mission would determine the future direction of my career…

We’d received a tip-off from our informants that a medium-sized fishing boat carrying a large haul of cocaine paste would be heading towards a rendezvous in Manaus in the early hours of that morning, where it was to be refined and packed off to Rio de Janeiro.

Visibility was poor, the Negro was rough, churning with driftwood and flotsam, and the muggy heat kept steaming up my rain-spattered glasses, but despite my total lack of experience, the training we’d received filled me with confidence as I took the helm. I knew I was going to have to put all that theory into practice someday, I just really wasn’t expecting it to be so soon, and under such adverse conditions.

The Boston Whaler was firing at top speed, weaving among floating logs that were visible only when we were right on top of them. A colleague was operating our single spotlight, but no matter how powerful the beam was, it couldn’t be everywhere at once, and the guy had to work miracles lighting our path through the treacherous dark while scanning the horizon for sign of the fishing boat. He’d sweep the bow, then the river, and in the brief lapse between one and the other, I was basically flying blind. But I was young, and the young always think they’re going to emerge from every scrape unscathed.

We had a megaphone rigged to the boat which we used to order vessels to kill their engines so we could approach. The most experienced agent on board got to man the megaphone, making the rasping metallic voice of the Federal Police (FP) resound on the river, barking orders that were invariably obeyed.

My comrades on that mission that night were all agents from the Operations Service, part of the Amazonas Regional Superintendency’s respected Narcotics Unit. The DRE, as the Portuguese abbreviation goes, was known for being extremely active in the field, with agents who were highly focused and motivated, and who basically lived and breathed the war on drugs 24-7. Amazonas State was traditionally one of the champions when it came to drug seizures, especially cocaine, whether in paste or already refined.

The first two boats we waved down that night were practically empty and came up clean. The third vessel we stopped was a largish fishing boat, a one-decker, but roomy, and it had a huge hold, big enough for an average-sized man to stand up straight in.

Four colleagues jumped aboard and two of them went straight for the hold. The whole vessel was draped with this thick blue tarpaulin, covering what was obviously cargo. Having rafted the Boston Whaler level, I stood by and watched as one of the agents struggled to pull back the heavy canvas and reveal the load.

I remember that the agent operating the searchlight trained the beam on the canvas, and we all waited expectantly for the big reveal. It really looked like we’d found the drugs we’d been searching for. Weapons drawn, we were just waiting for confirmation so we could read the crew their rights.

That’s when I heard those words I will never forget:

— It’s nothing. Just a bunch of turtles!

There must have been over sixty enormous freshwater turtles on deck, stacked one on top of the other, and just shy of the same number again down in the hold.

That team was so focused on taking a few dozen kilos of cocaine paste off the market that they couldn’t have been bothered with turtles.

As I watched that vessel pull away, I kept wondering to myself how many of those reptiles were females, how many of those females were pregnant, and what impact their removal would have not just on the chelonian population, but on the ecosystem as a whole.

In a fraction of a second, I weighed up whether those few hundred turtles were really less important than a couple of hundred kilos of cocaine paste or an average haul of electronic appliances smuggled out of the Free Trade Zone of Manaus.

But, in the end, they were “just turtles”…

My first nocturnal mission never faded from memory and triggered in me a wave of questions concerning the remit of the Federal Police. More importantly, it sparked the initiative I took, some years later, to draw up a formal proposal for the creation of a unit specializing in combating crimes against wildlife and nature.

My years as an agent stationed in the Amazon had shown me another Brazil. While there, I made the most of what I knew would be a magical phase in my life, a time of enchantment, adventure, and the richest possible blend of professional experiences, which I would remember and cherish for the rest of my days. These rare stretches of time are truly astounding, knowing as we do, right there in the throes of it all, that what we’re accumulating is capital that will underwrite so much yet to come.

I returned to Rio de Janeiro, my hometown, after roughly three years working in the Amazon. My experiences during that period had left an indelible mark. Having cut my teeth at the Federal Police unit in Manaus, it was crystal clear just how fundamentally that rainforest region had shaped me as a civil servant.

**

After two more years as a Federal Police agent in Rio, I took the Police Chief exams, the first called in a decade.2 Eighteen months of uninterrupted study saw me pass as one of the top candidates. I was called to the National Police Academy in Brasília, where I underwent the necessary training and embarked on my career in Rio. It was late 1995.

In 1996, after a spell working for the Maritime and Border Police Operations Service, my first post as chief, I was transferred to Internal Affairs.

This was the latter half of the 90s in Rio de Janeiro, and I was a young Police Chief still on his probation period. This was a time when corruption was still a serious problem within the Federal Police. Thankfully, we no longer have to talk about that particular circle of hell, but I couldn’t wait to get away from it.

So it was maybe no accident that, as Head of Discipline at Internal Affairs for the Regional Federal Police in Rio de Janeiro, I put a lot of dedication and thought into penning a 37-page document proposing the creation of a Federal Police coordination and control unit, with offices in every state, devoted exclusively to combatting environmental crime.

From my desk at the freezing Internal Affairs bureau, I noticed a significant rise in cases involving the apprehension of small mammals (mostly marmosets), birds and even spiders at Rio’s Galeão Airport. I also noted the need for a specialized form of approach in these cases, and a general dearth of in-depth investigation into the key actors at the source and the chain of involvement abroad. So I decided to write a “Proposal for the Implementation of a Special Unit to Combat Crimes against The Environment and Nature”, a somewhat redundant title, I admit.

The proposal started off discussing the millions of dollars wildlife trafficking generates per year, and how the Federal Police might crack down on these crimes, an endeavor that would also be extremely positive for the corporation’s image, generate favorable media coverage, and help in attracting a larger budget. The document included some commentary on passages from the Federal Constitution that addressed environmental protection and explored the pros and cons of each of the existing legal penalties for environmental crimes.

Broadly speaking, the document proposed the creation of specialized bureaus inside the existing decentralized FP units in each state, and outlined the basic suggested operational and organizational structure for these bureaus. It also provided for a central coordination and control unit where the fundamental priorities and goals would be established.

Of special note is that the project, even back then, made provisions for how anti-deforestation actions in the Amazon could become an article of compliance for Brazilian protein producers, seeing as the United States was already starting to boycott meat from livestock raised on cleared tropical forest.

The proposal underscored the enormous potential for international cooperation between Brazil’s Federal Police and other police forces abroad, especially Interpol and kindred environmental crime units, such as the United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS).

The second half of the document analyzed the modus operandi of smugglers moving endangered species and discussed the “laundering” of wildlife illegally (including eggs) snatched from natural habitats. It also addressed the participation of researchers in these schemes. Another important focus was the threat posed by logging operations in the Brazilian North, with the utter destruction worked in Malaysia taken as a cautionary tale. Also examined was the important connection between environmental crime and pollution, especially where headwaters and water resources are affected. In this, it focused largely on the “Water War” many saw looming on the horizon at the time. Lastly, the document provided hard data on wildlife trafficking, with special emphasis on Rio de Janeiro State.

When the “proposal” was 80% ready, I decided it would be important to visit some environmental crime units abroad so as to fine-tune my content and complete the draft. It would be the icing on the cake.

**

So I called an old friend of mine, Richard “Rick” Ford, then chief of the FBI’s antiterrorist squad, based in Washington D.C.. I wanted to visit the USFWS, because its remit, capacity and mission were similar to those I was proposing.

I asked Rick if he could float my idea to the USFWS and arrange a two-day visit for me at their HQ in the pretty town of Arlington, Virgina. I thought it best if they knew ahead of time that I’d be going there to study their structure and brief so that I could propose the creation of something similar here in Brazil, within the Federal Police.

Rick set up some other visits for me too, including trips to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), some environmental agencies, and National Park Service offices. Though these visits were largely administrative in scope, they added some important color to my field study.

I traveled alone, during a vacation I took at the end of 1996, and I covered all my own expenses. Agent Ford and his family were kind enough to put me up. However, two days into the trip, Rick and his team had to leave on an urgent mission to Lima as part of the tactical unit that stormed the Japanese Embassy there after it was seized by terrorists. Then-President Fujimori had appealed to Washington for help in the matter. So, I had to soldier on without the aid of my FBI chaperone.

My visit to the Fish and Wildlife Service fostered some important reflections which I added to my proposal upon my return to Brazil, especially concerning the formulation of what I called a “basic priorities program” and compilation of lists of operation hotspots.

To make it all more appealing, I included photographs, illustrations and figures, all added by hand, using cut-outs and glue, which I later photocopied into the final version of the document along with the letterhead and logo of the “future unit”. There wasn’t any image-treatment software to speak of back then, at least none that was accessible to us.

One of the pictures I used became something of a symbol of our cause. It was a photograph, almost a close-up, of four black tufted-ear marmosets holding the golden shield of the Federal Police. Originally published on the front page of O Globo newspaper in 1996, the photo was taken after an operation busted an international wildlife trafficking ring at Galeão Airport, Rio de Janeiro. A VARIG airline flight attendant was intercepted while attempting to smuggle the marmosets aboard a flight to Rome, Italy. The photographer accompanying the mission managed to capture these charming little animals playing with Agent Hudson Bizzo’s badge.

It was precisely that newspaper article that convinced me that the creation of the environmental crime unit I was designing would attract a lot of media interest. I remember that, back then, unlike today, the Federal Police almost never made the headlines, much less have its insignia in living color on the front page of the broadsheets, and in a positive light too. I cut the picture out and kept it. Later, I visited the O Globo newsroom and delivered a written request for that photo. I was promptly given the full color negatives of all the pictures taken that day. I made ample use of that photo specifically (with all the necessary authorizations) in numerous campaigns the unit launched over the years. We also had posters printed, framed and hung in the offices of various FP directors in Brasília.

I spent the weeks following my return polishing my proposal, and then, on January 15, 1997, submitted it to the authorities in Brasília in four registered copies. An initiative like this has to observe the chain of command, and there are hierarchical channels that must be respected, so the proposal was sent through my unit—Internal Affairs, Rio de Janeiro. As a precaution, I also forwarded the document through the FP’s intelligence channel.

During this period, only one colleague collaborated with me on the endeavor: my department head, Mr. Jorge Freitas, Chief of Internal Affairs. He knew I was working on the proposal and he supported me throughout. He read a draft version of some parts of the document and was always extremely positive in his response.

**

Two months after submitting my project proposal, I started to receive the first concrete response to my suggestions.

As various colleagues at the Regional Federal Police Superintendency in Rio de Janeiro had learned of the proposal sent to Brasília, they started informing me of animal-trafficking cases as they came in, mostly from Galeão Airport. Though I was not in charge of these investigations, I often tagged along, taking notes and photographing the evidence. My intention was to amass an image bank of variations in the traffickers’ M.O.

I became something of a specialist on the theme in Rio de Janeiro, albeit informally.

One case I’ll never forget was that of the German national Marc Baungarten, caught boarding a plane to Europe with 112 spiders. I accompanied the arrest. It was an excellent opportunity for me to probe the subject more deeply from the biopiracy angle. As intended, the case made quite a splash in the media, mainly because of the pictures showing dozens of hand-sized tarantulas climbing out of plastic boxes. The impact was such that the celebrated economist Roberto Campos, woefully uninformed, published a snide article entitled “The spider is ours”, a jab at what he perceived to be a certain protectionism behind the operation. The Police Chief in charge of the case was singled out for particular criticism.

**

As my proposal spoke a great deal about international cooperation, one of the four copies I submitted was sent to the Interpol National Center Bureau in Brasília. It’s important to stress that Interpol in Brazil is actually a branch of the Federal Police, in conformity with the organizational chart drawn up by Interpol’s General Secretariat in Lyon, France.

In virtue of that, in May 1997, I received a radiogram inviting me to a meeting of Interpol’s Subgroup for Crimes Against Wildlife. The meeting was to be held on a reserve in South Africa, near Kruger Park, at a private establishment called Kapama Lodge. I told my boss I really wanted to go. The Director-General said he would authorize it, so long as the Administration didn’t have to pay for it. I managed to get airfare at ten per cent the original price thanks to Police Chief Luiz Cravo Dorea, who was in charge of our Airports Unit. The land travel was up to me.

My visit to Kapama was a watershed for the work I was planning. A whole week living and breathing the fight against the trafficking of endangered wildlife in the heart of the African savanna, surrounded by the most experienced environmental police men and women on the planet, many of whom would become my lifelong friends.

Names like the Israeli Bill Clark, whose entire career had been devoted to saving elephants from the claws of ivory hunters; Ken Goddard, successful author, novelist, and “second in command” at the foremost wildlife forensic lab in the world, located in Oregon. Also present at Kapama was the lab’s director, the Chilean-born American Ed Espinoza, recognized as the leading authority in the field.

The gathering represented an unprecedented leap forward for the project. I made contact with officers from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, France (the Douane Française—French customs office, reporting directly to the Economic Ministry), Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Tanzania, and the USA.

It was an eclectic group, as we had everything from customs officers to a member of the Mexican Public Prosecutors’ Office, and such illustrious figures as the Scot John Sellar, Director of CITES—Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, based in Geneva, Switzerland. I was delighted to discover that there was a real brotherhood of police representatives from all over the world devoted to saving endangered species through investigation and policing.

I studied these foreign units’ procedures and processes in every detail, and it all spoke directly to the creation of our specialized unit. I wrote a mission report, illustrated with photos and graphs, as would become praxis for our reports going forward. I divided the report into sections, and some of those caused a stir in Brazil. One of the most interesting was a notitia criminis concerning the smuggling of two specimens of Lear’s macaw intercepted by French Customs at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport in Paris. This case was given a report apart that ended up instigating an investigation at the Superintendency in Rio, led by Ricardo Bechara. It was an interesting episode, a clear case of “wildlife laundering” by a breeder in Chile.

It’s important to note that, just like dirty money, stolen cars, or mob fugitives, wildlife can also be laundered. Everything of illicit origin can be laundered in the sense of being falsely legitimized by (re)introduction into the system. Animals captured in the wild are fitted with chips, and documents are forged to make it look like they were bred legally in captivity. It’s the animal equivalent of fugitives on the run from Interpol being given forged identities.