Brazilian here. I'm 100% for combating and arresting illegal miners, loggers and farmers, but I also know how big the rainforest is, how long the borders are, and how little personnel there is to do the work. Most people don't have a sense of how vast that region is: the brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest is about half the area of the U.S. Now look up how many soldiers and federal police officers are working there. It's daunting, feels like the drug war, only fifty times worse, because there's no solution anywhere close to something like legalization.
At least with mining and logging it leaves evidence in aerial imagery, unlike a clandestine lab. Maybe one day the amazon can be automatically patrolled by drones that mark targets for these smaller squads.
> patrolled by drones that mark targets for these smaller squads.
Surely it could be scaled better with satellite imagery? Assuming it can be updated "reasonably frequently". I imagine drones would run into maintenance problems, especially in such "remote" regions.
Also a brazilian. I don't really care about it. I'd rather they used that vast amount of land for something that's more economically relevant. If you told me I could push a button to get state of the art semiconductor factories but the side effect was the destruction of the amazon... I wouldn't even think twice.
