Brazil's first woman president, Dilma Rousseff wants to eliminate more than 86,000 hectares of protected areas in the Amazon

The immediate reason? To make way for at least two large hydroelectric dams being worked out on paper, including the Tapajos project – an 8,000 megawatt power station the government would like to see built on the border of Para and Amazonas states.

The (Brazilian) President is backtracking on Brazil's environmental commitments, and will use any means necessary to push through an agenda of expensive mega-infrastructure projects in the Amazon

Profits from deforestation range from near zero to thousand of dollars a hectare.In some places, there are huge incentives to convert or degrade forest.In Cameroon, oil palm and intensive cocoa cultivation has a net present value of more than $1,400 a hectare.In Brazil's cerrado, some conversions result in land values over $3,000 a hectare.And India offers very high values for land devoted to coffee cultivation in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot.

Minc said the environment ministry will bring criminal charges against all of them. The government will also create an environmental police force with 3,000 heavily armed and specially trained officers to help combat illegal deforestion.

Carlos Minc, the Brazilian environment minister, said the upcoming national elections were partly to blame, with mayors in the Amazon region ignoring illegal loggers in the hope of gaining votes locally.