Interpol says a Latin America sweep brought 233 arrests and 60,000 hectares
Operation Madre Tierra VIII, run from 1 June to 31 July and announced on Wednesday, recorded 233 arrests in nine countries, more than 1,000 animals recovered, and 60,000 hectares of illegally cleared forest. Seizures included up to 4.6 tonnes of cyanide. Investigators linked the timber and wildlife trade to 161 companies on several continents.
San Salvador2 min read
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Interpol said on Wednesday that Operation Madre Tierra VIII had produced 233 arrests across nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the recovery of more than 1,000 live animals, and the identification of 60,000 hectares of illegally cleared forest. The operation ran from 1 June to 31 July. The announcement was made in San Salvador. The countries were Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama.
The animal count includes exotic birds and big cats. Interpol's note listed an ocelot, a CITES Appendix I species, rescued in Mexico, and a caged lion seized on a property there. Costa Rica seizures included parrots. Illegal mining was disrupted in Guatemala. Across more than 330 cases, investigators recorded 313 seizures, among them up to 4.6 tonnes of cyanide, plus mercury and ammunition. A further 312 people were identified as suspects without being in the arrest total. The 233 and the 312 are different columns. Adding them invents a single pool the agency did not publish.
The hectare figure is the one that connects this sweep to the Amazon file Interpol has been building. In the previous phase, investigators suspected a network of clearing more than 52,000 hectares of protected forest in the Amazon basin. Madre Tierra VIII went after the company layer. Interpol said the work revealed links to 161 companies and 65 individuals operating on several continents. CNN Brasil reported that company link alongside the Wednesday totals. A cleared hectare in the basin and a company registered elsewhere are the two ends of the chain the agency says it can now name.
Cyanide at 4.6 tonnes is a mining number, not a wildlife number. It sits in the seizure list because illegal gold mining and the timber trade are using the same corridors. Mercury is the other mining marker in the same sentence. A reader who files this only as an animal rescue will miss the chemical weight. A reader who files it only as a mining raid will miss the ocelot and the lion.
The timing is an announcement lag, not an operation in October. The fieldwork ended on 31 July. The compiled figures were released on 7 October. That gap is normal for a nine-country case build, and it means Wednesday's 233 is not a count of arrests made this week. Anyone treating it as a fresh raid total will mis-date the policing.
What the release does not give is the status of the 161 companies: charged, named, or only linked on paper. Until those names are public, the checkable core is the arithmetic Interpol did publish: 233 arrests, 312 further suspects, 1,000 animals, 60,000 hectares, 4.6 tonnes of cyanide, and a company count of 161 that reaches beyond the nine countries that made the arrests.
