Federal agents swooped in to close sawmills and confiscate wood in a government crackdown on illegal logging less than three months ago.

But now tractors are moving logs again in this Amazon town and locals are back to turning wood scraps into charcoal, an example of the difficulty of stamping out illegal cutting.

"It's starting up again, but it's not like it was, and nobody knows for how long," said Zenito Santiago de Souza, 44, who lost his job in the government raid. "They're saying the police are coming back on the 20th."

The government crackdown came after satellite data in January projected a 34 percent spike in Amazon destruction _ a political embarrassment for President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva after three consecutive years of decline.

Silva, who met Friday with Latin American and European leaders vowing to combat climate change, insists he's trying to protect the environment and his aides point to the raid in Tailandia as an example.

But Silva also is struggling to help millions of poor in his sprawling nation, balancing conservation and development. And with 70 percent of jobs in the area tied to logging, the raid left behind widespread unemployment and crime.

Environment Minister Marina Silva, no relation to the president, resigned Tuesday, apparently in despair over the obstacles she faced in policing places like Tailandia. She also criticized the government's failure to provide sustainable alternatives to illegal logging.

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region, an area larger than Western Europe, releases an estimated 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, making Brazil the world's sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

February's crackdown initially enraged residents. About 2,000 protesters burned tires, blocked roads and forced environmental workers to flee before heavily armed federal police restored order.

Sawmills working without registration lost their machinery or were shut. Registered sawmills that could not prove the origin of their wood were fined, and the wood was seized.

"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. Continued...