"Land seizures and COVID-19: the twin threats to Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples", 6 April 2020

Across Brazil, many Indigenous peoples have gone into voluntary isolation, barricading access roads to protect their villages from the COVID-19 pandemic… One of the unavoidable effects of voluntary ‘lockdowns’ in Indigenous villages is a reduction of their ability to patrol their territories …Brazil’s decree that environmental protection is an “essential service” during the pandemic exists only on paper. In practice, under the current circumstances environmental authorities have less capacity to implement their enforcement role…Roughly one-third of IBAMA’s field operatives won’t go to the field because they are over 60 or have pre-existing medical conditions that put them at greater risk from the virus. Field inspection staff are further hampered by logistical difficulties caused by fewer flights and closures of hotels and restaurants. These impediments follow on from a year in which the Bolsonaro administration undermined Brazil’s system of inspecting and monitoring protected areas…

During 2019, budgets were slashed, patrols reduced. The number of environmental fines levied by IBAMA in 2019 fell by 34% over 2018. Correspondingly, as documented Amnesty International in November 2019, some cattle farmers and grileiros have intensified their efforts to illegally seize protected land to graze cattle there.