Nature Warriors

On his first nocturnal mission in 1989, searching river boats for an expected drug haul, Federal Police agent Jorge Pontes heard something he would never forget: "—It's nothing, just turtles!" Over a hundred freshwater turtles, one bigger than the other, packed into the cargo hold of a fishing boat. For that team of agents, so focused on its mission to find and seize a few dozen kilos of cocaine paste, a hull-load of smuggled turtles meant "nothing". But for Jorge Pontes, that scene not only raised a thousand questions about the remit of the Federal Police, but was the spark that would lead, some years later, to his formal submission of a proposal for the creation of a unit specializing in crimes against the nation's flora and fauna. This proposal gave rise to the Division for the Repression of Crimes Against the Environment and Natural Heritage (DMAPH), signed into law on December 13, 2001. In Nature Warriors, Jorge Pontes recounts some crucial episodes that led to the division's creation and some of the mega-operations launched during his tenure. Looking back over his career, the author draws a vast panorama of the environmental issue in Brazil and the fundamental role the Federal Police has played in bringing environmental crimes to justice.