The exotic sentence was imposed on Rosita Heredia, a Harvard-educated cultural anthropologist who was born in Brazil but is now an American citizen.

Terrence Boyle, a US district judge, rejected a plea agreement that would have required Heredia to spend 120 hours doing routine community service such as feeding the poor.

Instead he ordered her to do just 40 hours of normal community service and to spend two of the next three years “involved in the effort to preserve and protect” the Amazon.

“My client was delighted. She would much rather work in her field of interest than work in a soup kitchen,” said Lyle Yurko, Heredia’s lawyer.

The judge said that it would be up to Heredia’s probation officer to decide whether she had fulfilled the requirement, but that he expected her to travel to Brazil. She is already working on a documentary about Amazon tribes.

The case arose from the sale in 1998 of Ms Heredia’s 1,000-piece collection of ceremonial masks, head- dresses, weapons and other artefacts from the Amazon to Lawrence Small, who is now the head of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Heredia began collecting tribal art in Brazil as a teenager and brought the collection to the United States when she met and married an American. She got permission from Brazil to export the collection for educational purposes, but did not get American import permits.

The collection was put on display at the UN headquarters in New York and at the museum at the University of California at Berkeley, where Heredia became a student.

When she split up from her husband, however, Heredia was forced to sell the bulk of the collection to Mr Small for $400,000 (£220,000) to meet her debts. Mr Small was named head of the Smithsonian Institute by President Clinton in 2000, becoming the first non-academic to head America’s largest network of museums. But his appointment triggered a backlash that Heredia’s lawyer blames for the criminal charges. When an article about Mr Small’s collection appeared in The Washington Post, a tipster called the authorities.

“Somebody inside the Smithsonian spotted the endangered species,” Mr Yurko said. Tests revealed that 206 items in the collection contained parts from endangered species, such as the harpy eagle, jaguar, leopard and giant armadillo.

Mr Small pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service — which he has not yet served.

The collection is currently lying unseen in the custody of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

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