Study: Over 8% of Brazil's Amazon region illegally owned

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 6 (Xinhua) -- More than eight percent of Brazil's Amazon rainforest region, totaling some 42 million hectares, is not legally owned, says a study released in the Brazilian press on Friday.

According to the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (Imazon), a non-governmental organization which carried out the study at the request of the World Bank, the owners of these areas either hold informal titles to property, have acquired false documents or simply have taken over unoccupied land.

Despite the efforts of federal governments, the situation does not seem to have improved, says Imazon.

It amounts to a free privatization of forestland, as the owners did not pay for the land or pay taxes, said Paulo Barreto, a forester who coordinated the study.

The illegally-owned forestland includes 16 million hectares in the northern state of Para and 9.6 million hectares in the midwestern Mata Grosso state, which registered the largest such area.

Similar areas also exist in the states of Amazonas, Rondonia, Roraima and Tocantins.

Additionally, 4,400 properties, totaling 3.2 million hectares, are registered as both legal and illegal.

That means that an owner holding a legal title to a property also acquired a neighboring piece of land without any legal registration.