Lula Acts to Protect Amazon

In his first day of his third term as Brazil's president Luiz Lula da Silva, issued six decrees revolving or altering rules issued by the his anti-environmental predecessor.  Immediately thereafter, Norway announced it would release funds for new environmental projects since Lula demonstrated his commitment to reducing deforestation and restoring governance structure of the Amazon Fund to which industrial nations contribute and Jair Bolsonaro stalled. 

Lula also created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to fulfill a campaign promise to "combat 500 years of inequality".  He accused the Bolsonaro government of destroying the protection of the environment in his inauguration speech. Bolsonaro did not attend Lula's swearing-in ceremony, copying his dubious hero, Herr Trumpillini.  Lula told his countrymen that the world, "expects Brazil to once again become a leader in facing the climate crisis, and an example of a socially and environmentally responsible country."  Brazil achieved a reduction in deforestation of 83% between 2004 and 2012.  Bolsonaro reduces the number of prosecutions of environmental violations from 5300 per year between 2014 and 2018 to only 17 in 2020.

In other positive conservation news from Latin America, the Mexican Navy announced that it has arrested members of criminal gangs involved in the trafficking of totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) swim bladders that can be sold on the black market for upwards of $80,000 per kilo. The decline of this species has led to the near extinction of the vaquita, a small porpoise that inhabits the Gulf of California.  Only an estimated nine individuals are thought to be alive in the Gulf. Vaquita often become in entangled in nets set out to catch totoaba. The gangs supplied expensive nets to illegal fishermen and then transported their catch to China, sometimes using commercial flights. The Navy told reporters that it had installed radar sets in zero tolerance zones, and confiscated 744 illegal nets.  Enforcement works.