Brazil's illegal logging hard to combat

But now tractors are moving logs again in this Amazon town and locals are back to turning wood scraps into charcoal, an example of the difficulty of stamping out illegal cutting.

"It's starting up again, but it's not like it was, and nobody knows for how long," said Zenito Santiago de Souza, 44, who lost his job in the government raid. "They're saying the police are coming back on the 20th."

The government crackdown came after satellite data in January projected a 34 percent spike in Amazon destruction -a political embarrassment for President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva after three consecutive years of decline.

Silva, who met Friday with Latin American and European leaders vowing to combat climate change, insists he's trying to protect the environment and his aides point to the raid in Tailandia as an example.

But Silva also is struggling to help millions of poor in his sprawling nation, balancing conservation and development. And with 70 percent of jobs in the area tied to logging, the raid left behind widespread unemployment and crime.

Environment Minister Marina Silva, no relation to the president, resigned Tuesday, apparently in despair over the obstacles she faced in policing places like Tailandia. She also criticized the government's failure to provide sustainable alternatives to illegal logging.

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region, an area larger than Western Europe, releases an estimated 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, making Brazil the world's sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

February's crackdown initially enraged residents. About 2,000 protesters burned tires, blocked roads and forced environmental workers to flee before heavily armed federal police restored order.

Sawmills working without registration lost their machinery or were shut. Registered sawmills that could not prove the origin of their wood were fined, and the wood was seized.