RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Hundreds of loggers and angry residents have surrounded eight Greenpeace members who tried to leave an Amazon town with a scorched tree trunk for an exhibit on global warming, the environmental group said Wednesday.
The activists are holed up in the makeshift headquarters of the federal environmental agency in the town of Castelo dos Sonhos, Greenpeace campaigner Andre Muggiati said. They are being protected by police and army soldiers.
The region in the Amazon state of Para is part of the so-called “arc of destruction,” the southern edge of the rain forest that has been devastated by loggers. In 2005, American missionary Dorothy Stang was shot dead in the region during a land dispute.
On Tuesday, the Greenpeace activists tried to haul away a badly burned fallen tree trunk for an exhibit on global warming in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Muggiati said.
Marcelo Marquesini, who is charge of the Greenpeace expedition, said that the loggers had sent a committee Wednesday to meet with the environmentalists.
“The situation is calmer now,” he said from inside the besieged headquarters. Marquesini said he expected they would be allowed to leave late Wednesday or early today.
The newspaper Jornal Provincia do Tapajos said residents were angry Greenpeace removed the trunk without getting the local community’s permission.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
