Brazil's illegal logging hard to combat

"Pretty much everyone was fined. Only one guy wasn't fined, but I think they came back and fined him later," said Flavio Sufredini, who runs a sawmill caught with illegal wood.

It's nearly impossible to work legally in a region where the majority of land has no clear owner, he said. Loggers must provide land titles to receive logging permits.

"The guy who doesn't have any title to the land just cuts it all down because the land doesn't even belong to him, and so there's nobody to fine," Sufredini said. "It's the guys trying to operate legally that are punished."

Federal police seized 15,500 tons of illegally logged wood, 19 chain saws, 10 firearms and 95 vehicles.

Brazil's environmental agency, Ibama, handed out more than $25 million in fines. It now reports an 80 percent drop in deforestation in the three Amazon states where the operation continues.

But environmentalists warn that the number is unreliable because little logging occurs between December and June, when conditions are too wet.

While few people spoke openly about the sawmills returning to work, Tailandia was bustling on a Saturday night. Hoteliers and restaurant owners said things were back to normal after an initial slowdown.

Tractors could be glimpsed through the unpainted gates of reopened sawmills hauling tree trunks through the mud in preparation for cutting.

Meanwhile, the town's poor are using the detritus of the raid to earn a meager living.

Sergio Tavares Araujo, 40, gathered scrap wood off the floor of the Santo Antonio sawmill, shut down in February for operating without a license.