Brazil carried out its first raids on illegal deforestation of the Amazon rainforest on Thursday after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged to end the environmental destruction that surged under his predecessor, former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Reuters journalists accompanied authorities on the raids, led by environmental agency Ibama, in the rainforest state of Pará. About 10 Ibama agents sent out on Thursday, along with a dozen federal police, toward an Indigenous reserve where satellite images showed loggers and ranchers recently at work illegally clearing the forest.

Givanildo dos Santos Lima, the agent leading Ibama’s Uruará missions, said 16 missions are scheduled this year to fight deforestation.

An area larger than Denmark was deforested under Bolsonaro – a 60 per cent increase from the previous four years.

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