With Guns and Fines, Brazil Takes On Loggers

A convoy of six black sport utility vehicles pulled into a lumberyard unannounced here one recent morning. Out popped about two dozen members of Brazil’s security and police forces, packing sidearms and rifles. But the weapon the foreman feared most was carried by a separate group of agents of Brazil’s national environmental agency: bright yellow tape measures.

“Thirty-eight! Seventy!” the agents shouted from the logs clustered in the thick mud as they quickly went to work. One agent, Mario Rubbo, jotted down the volume of each log for comparison with what the lumberyard had declared to state authorities. Discrepancies could mean fines or criminal charges.

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