Amazon Farmer & Illegal Logging Whistleblower Murdered At His Home - AP

[hatrack]

An Amazon farmer who received death threats after reporting illegal logging to authorities was shot to death as he left his house, Brazilian media reported Saturday. Emival Barbosa Machado, 50, was shot three times Friday in the eastern city of Tucurui, the Globo TV network said. No arrests have been made.

Machado had often reported illegal logging and shipments of lumber in Para, a largely lawless state where American nun and rain forest defender Dorothy Stang was killed in 2005. Machado told the environmental protection agency Ibama that locals were forced to deliver wood to loggers and were killed if they refused. "He made various complaints to us, and we seized lumber and boats thanks to his reports," Anibal Picanco, Ibama's superintendent in Para, said in a televised interview.

Phone calls to police in Tucurui went unanswered Saturday.

Para has been targeted in a government crackdown after satellite photos showed illegal logging in the Amazon was on the upswing.

EDIT

http://www.kansascity.com/news/world/story/593197.html

[crikkett]

1. RIP Emival Barbosa Machado

martyr
:cry:

[Zachstar]

2. Very sad. However his death will bring more attention to the area.

People using landsat and other sources of recent info can find and perhaps report small areas of unlawful logging all over the globe.

One of the reasons why I wish the .gov would start using the spy sats to look for additional evidence so that the operations can be stunned better.

[pscot]

3. Primitives!

Don't they know you're supposed to poison the guy's dog first?

[femrap]

4. May the rich loggers

rest in hell.....soon.

[formercia]

5. Logs to make expensive furniture for wealthy people.

cockroaches.