Police in Brazil have arrested a businessman for alleged illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest.
He was arrested in Pará state, the federal police said on Thursday.
The suspect was described as "the largest destroyer" ever investigated in the Amazon.
A court also confiscated 16 farms and 10,000 head of cattle and froze assets worth 116 million reais ($24.1 million).
The suspect illegally appropriated more than 21,000 hectares of public land with accomplices, according to police. They are said to have fraudulently registered plots of land near their own lands in the names of relatives.
According to the police, more than 6,500 hectares of rainforest have already been cut down to use the areas for cattle breeding.
When he took office at the beginning of the year, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that he would step up environmental and climate protection. For example, the police recently took action against illegal gold prospectors with a series of large-scale operations.
The Amazon - the largest rainforest in the world - holds 12% of the planet's fresh water and is home to 10% of all species in the world, according the conservation organization WWF.
WWF calculates that around 20% of the original area of the Amazon has already been destroyed. Scientists fear that a loss of 25% is a tipping point from which the ecosystem may no longer recover.
