'You're looking to die': the Brazil river where illegal fishing threatens lives
Tom Phillips in Atalaia do Norte
Sat 3 Jun 2023 13.00 EDT
Javari Valley’s most prized asset is the arapaima, a giant air-breathing fish which Brazilians call the pirarucu and Peruvians know as paiche. Photograph: Mamiraua Institute of Sustainabl/AFP/Getty Images
Poaching of endangered species flourishes despite widespread outcry – but sustainable fishing could end the violence engulfing the trade
José Maria Batista Damasceno weeps as he describes his decades dodging death in the Brazilian Amazon.
There was the time, along the Japurá River, that an illegal fisherman threatened to butcher him if he didn’t get out of town. “You’d better leave or we’ll harpoon you,” Damasceno remembers being told.
A few years later he narrowly escaped being ambushed and murdered in another remote corner of the rainforest – just as Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips were last year.
“It was really, really heavy,” Damasceno says, breaking down as he describes how the failure of his boat’s engine saved him from running into a group of heavily armed assassins who were lying in wait.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/03/poaching-brazil-amazon-fishing-pirarucu-dom-phillips-bruno-pereira