Brazil Pursues Crackdown on Loggers After Surge in Cutting

The Brazilian government has begun an invasive crackdown on logging in the Amazon, an operation that pits environmental regulators against people who say they depend on those protected resources to survive.

After three years of declining rates of deforestation, satellite images released in January showed that about 2,700 square miles of land in the Brazilian Amazon had been cleared in the final five months of 2007 -- a rate that would represent more than a 60 percent increase over the five-month average of the prior year.

The government quickly issued a moratorium on logging in the hardest-hit areas, including this town, which sits about four hours by car from the mouth of the Amazon River. Officials suppose that 70 percent of the population of about 65,000 here depends on the wood industry. Some work for big logging operations. Many more are like Ediline Natos, the wood industry's version of sustenance farmers.