By Tom Phillips in Alta Floresta.
November 9, 2007

"Lula [president of Brazil) says what he says because it is beneficial for him. But this year they have chopped down much more. What I am supposed to say to the guys [to stop them?]" added Mr Menezes.

Mr Menezes compared the illegal actions of the loggers to the American invasion of Iraq. If George Bush could attack a country out of financial interest, why could the loggers not do the same to the rainforest, he wondered.

"If you were stood next to your house and there was a mahogany tree next to you which would be worth R$5,000 (£1,360) if you chopped it down and your son was there crying out with hunger what would you do?"

Activists claim that the spike in deforestation is a sign that the government's action plan has been largely ineffective. They argue that the recent reductions owe more to external economic factors such as the market price of soy and beef.

With ranchers now looking to cash in on rising prices, Marcelo Marquesini, a former inspector for Ibama (Brazilian ministry of the environment's enforcement agency) who now works for Greenpeace, says the outlook for the rainforest is bleak. "Brazilian society has to celebrate the reduction of deforestation over these three years. It genuinely did fall," said Mr Marquesini, whose organisation will next month launch a report criticising the government's failure to control this notoriously lawless region.

But, he added, "everything now leads us to believe that deforestation is going to rise again".

On the frontline of the government's battle against deforestation are men such as Decio Luiz Motta, a fresh-faced 38-year-old environmental inspector from Rio de Janeiro who heads a six-man taskforce in the dusty frontier town of Novo Progresso. Sitting at a rickety wooden table in the unit's improvised HQ, Mr Motta said progress was being made, pointing to the apprehension of 13 lorries carrying illegal wood the previous day. "Just our being here reduces what is happening," he said.

"The infrastructure we have is much better, you have people who know how to use satellite imagery, GPS. It used to be much more about following your nose. The monitoring teams would see smoke coming from a certain area and head there to check it out. Now we are much better equipped for this work."

Yet the challenges facing such inspectors are clear. Mr Motta's team has just three cars to police a huge and remote area of rainforest, for example.

The collusion of local residents with the loggers also made tackling deforestation more difficult. Mr Motta claimed that after a recent seizure of illegal wood in the nearby town of Castelo dos Sonhos the local petrol stations began to boycott the government inspectors, putting their vehicles temporarily out of action.

The region's loggers meanwhile are adamant that as long as the government gives them no economically viable alternative to logging, the deforestation will continue. "It is a farce," said Mr Menezes. "How are you going to take an area that has been mine for 20 years and tell me it is a conservation unit all of a sudden?"

He described the idea that a policy of "zero deforestation" could be introduced as "the biggest load of rubbish I have ever heard". Mr Menezes asked: "Where is he [President Lula] going to get 30,000 soldiers from to police the insides of this whole forest?"

Three thousand feet over the burning forest Paulo Adario, the Amazon director of Greenpeace, let out a sigh of resignation. "It's like a scene from a world war," he said gazing down at the forest, which now more resembled the aftermath of a napalm bombing.

"It is forbidden to sell cocaine, it's illegal to deal marijuana and it's illegal to molest little children," Mr Adario added with mix of frustration and irony. "And, as you can see, it is also illegal to destroy the Amazon rainforest."

This story originally appeared in The Guardian