Fernanda Wenzel Shifts Davidson’s Attention Toward the Deforestation of the Amazon

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This article was originally written for The Davidsonian, the student-led newspaper of Campus Consortium partner Davidson College.

If you were to walk from midwestern Pennsylvania to the Nevada/California border, you would have crossed through the Amazon rainforest. Covering 1.6 billion acres, the Amazon is home to nearly three million Indigenous people, with a mixture of different languages, customs, and cultures across large cities and smaller communities alike. In a talk hosted by the Dean Rusk International Studies Program and co-sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on September 23rd, journalist Fernanda Wenzel, joined by members of the Davidson community, recalled her investigation into how deforestation has affected her home country of Brazil. The deforestation of non-designated public lands has become a prevalent issue in recent years, especially with nearly 20% of the Amazon being lost due to deforestation or other climate-related issues in the last fifty years, according to a study done by the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Wenzel, who is currently a writer for Mongabay—a nonprofit media outlet that covers climate and biodiversity-related issues—has always been deeply rooted within climate awareness. “My grandfather was a beekeeper; I grew up in the countryside and my family used to go camping a lot [...] After I started working with the rainforest I realized it actually has a lot to do with my roots back home,” she stated over WhatsApp.

Prior to her Pulitzer Center project, Wenzel carried out fieldwork regarding illegal ranchers and their involvement with extractivists, traditional people who work with products from the forest like açaí. “I think the most exciting [journalism story] was my first fieldwork in the Amazon. I went to this conservation unit in [the] Rondônia state where extractivists were being expelled by illegal ranchers. I realized I had so much to learn,” Wenzel stated.

“I was the first reporter writing about this conservation unit, and I am proud to say I put it on the agenda. Since then, many other reporters have been writing about the violence against this traditional community. [...] Unfortunately, at this point almost all [of the] area has already been deforested.”

When Wenzel started her year-long investigation with the Pulitzer Center in 2022, she set out with the goal of learning the intricacies behind professional land grabbing, the process of illegally buying or leasing large-scale land acquisitions. “I didn't want to talk about some amateur that does a small area [...] and never does it again. I wanted to talk about people that do it all the time on an industrial basis,” Wenzel stated in her talk.

“To do that, you have to have a lot of money, because [making land purchases] in the Amazon is very expensive [...] So I realized that if I want to go after the big guys, I had to go after big deforestation.”

Much of the deforestation that has occurred in recent years was enabled by former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Under his administration from 2019-2022, deforestation surged, according to studies done by Carbon Brief. Many illicit land purchases made by deforesters were done through a jurisdiction form called the Rural Environment Register (CAR), which was initially created to try and improve the environmental control of rural properties in Brazil. To fill out a CAR, one simply has to say that they own land as part of their farm or property. From there, the government is supposed to confirm that the information is correct. This confirmation, however, rarely happens.

“The problem is that it never happens; it's a self [submitted] document [...] I can say I have a farm anywhere in Brazil, and I have a document saying that I have this land, but it may not be true. So that's why this document became interesting for land grabbers,” Wenzel stated. She also added how political pressure plays a significant role in these processes. “These [land grabbers] feel very reassured by politicians who defend their interests at local and national levels.” Wenzel expressed.

Frontis W. Johnston Associate Professor of Political Science Katherine Bersch further inquired as to how protected lands function in Brazil, asking to what extent is there land grabbing and how is it that these areas are protected. “There are a lot of people that [...] don't want to see these areas being protected,” Wenzel responded. “By far the most protected areas in Amazon are Conservation Units and Indigenous territories, [...] so that's why land grabbers usually prefer to go to undesignated lands, because it's much more simple.”

After she learned how CAR documents function, Wenzel began to search for the people responsible for destroying parts of the Amazon. “I got three names, these two guys: Augustinho Alba and Delmir José Alba were brothers, and a third guy named Jeferson de Andrade Rodrigues. But I need to know more about these guys, because in the Amazon, it's very common for the deforesters to use fronts,” Wenzel said.

She soon discovered through social media platforms revealing information about them through seemingly innocuous posts on Facebook. “I found on Facebook that Delmir [...] had sponsored the biggest rodeo [...] in the community, and usually the face for [these kinds] of things are the most important people in the community. So with all this information I saw, it makes sense that these guys are behind the deforestation.”

Money is a strong motive for these land grabbers, as Wenzel learned through local sources on the ground. “I could estimate that [the land grabbers] spent around $2.3 million dollars during the deforestation, but if they decide to sell this land [...] they will sell it for $17.5 million, so we are talking about a profit of more than $15 million,” Wenzel explained.

Unfortunately, Wenzel also described over the phone that these actions go beyond just monetary motives, and are rooted in larger issues within Brazil. “Many of them have been doing that [land grabbing] for a long time and they are not willing to change it. Economic reasons play a role too, since they don’t know how to make a living from [activities other] than logging, cattle ranching or illegal gold mining. And even if they were willing to learn new things [...] it is really hard to find public or private financing [for] these sustainable activities.”

Wenzel asserted that this is not just a Brazilian problem and that these atrocities can have negative effects on an international level due to the ongoing climate crisis. “71.5 billion metric tons of carbon—that's the estimated [amount] of carbon that the Amazon stores. [...] That's how important [the] Amazon is,” Wenzel declared. “But at the same time, the Amazon can be a large carbon emitter if we start to destroy it. So when the Amazon burns, [...] it starts to emit carbon into the atmosphere.” 

Students who attended the discussion felt they had much to learn from Wenzel. Megan Mokriski ‘25 was originally drawn to the talk for her Conservation Biology course, where they learn about biodiversity in the tropics. Despite prior knowledge, Mokriski emphasized how she learned of the complexities that come with deforestation in a country like Brazil, and how the challenges stretch beyond simply the environmental impact.

“I learned a lot more about current events in Brazil; [...] I didn't know anything about government and power,” Mokriski stated. “I think she did a good job simplifying it down to the main things that she could talk about; [...] it was obvious that she knew so much about it, and she was really passionate about it.”

Looking forward, Wenzel is excited to keep diving into topics she is passionate about, including an upcoming project on the effects of mercury contamination on Indigenous women and newborns. “I should be traveling for the Munduruku Indigenous land in November to do this work,” she stated.

Amidst the investigation, Wenzel emphasized that the value of on the ground reporting stories are the visible outcomes. “Both Rodrigues and Delmir took responsibility for the largest continuous deforestation in a statement to the Civil Police, given in June 2020,” Wenzel wrote in her article for the Pulitzer Center.

On a larger scale, Wenzel’s impact from her project extended to the deforesters themselves. After her story was published in early 2023, the federal police in Brazil underwent an operation that was carried out this past June. This resulted in further investigation into the men Wenzel researched. “That's why we work. It's very rewarding when something like that happens,” she stated.