The Mato Grosso Government’s actions to combat environmental crimes have already resulted in the application of R$303 million in fines in the first four months of 2024 alone. The main targets of the actions were illegal deforestation and illegal burning.
“Since the beginning of this administration, the State has acted with zero tolerance against environmental crimes. Proof of this are the results obtained throughout this first four months. Sema teams, firefighters and other security forces are always in the field to punish those who insist on causing environmental damage”, said the Secretary of State for the Environment (Sema), Mauren Lazzaretti.
Inspections by state bodies resulted in 1,198 infraction notices and 889 embargoed areas, resulting in 61 thousand hectares. The Amazon biome is the one with the highest number of fines applied, with R$256.69 million. In Cerrado and Pantanal there were R$27.93 and R$16.38 million in fines, respectively.
Fighting forest fires
Also in the first four months of 2024, the Mato Grosso Military Fire Department imposed R$21.3 million in fines for the irregular use of fire.
“We set up our inspection actions based on daily monitoring of hot spots with high-tech satellites and deforestation alerts associated with the irregular use of fire. This year, forecasts indicate that the climate will have drastic changes and, therefore, the government will be even stronger to prevent disasters from happening”, said the commander of the Environmental Emergency Battalion (BEA), Lieutenant Colonel Pryscilla de Souza.