Bogota: Police from five Amazon countries have arrested hundreds of people and seized timber, minerals and thousands of livestock in one of the largest coordinated crackdowns on environmental crime ever carried out in the world's largest rainforest.
Authorities from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru said Tuesday that Operation Green Shield 2026, which ran from July 15-31, deployed more than 3,600 officers targeting illegal mining, logging, wildlife trafficking, fuel smuggling and land grabbing - the illegal seizure or occupation of land, often followed by forest clearing - across the Amazon Basin.
