The number of fires in Brazil increased by 12.7 percent last year compared to the previous year. Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) recorded nearly 223,000 fires in the country last year, the most since 2010. In the Brazilian Amazon, the institute counted more than 103,000 fires, an annual increase of nearly sixteen percent.
Last year, 22,000 fires broke out in Brazil's part of the world's largest wetland, the Pantanal, according to INPE, 120 percent more than in 2019. The National Institute for Space Research uses satellite imagery to monitor the situation in forests.
According to AFP, this official statistic will put further pressure on the government of President Jairo Bolsonar.
The Amazon and Pantanal are among the rarest ecosystems in the world.
The Amazon rainforest, which is 60 percent in Brazil, plays an important role in absorbing greenhouse gases. That is, those that contribute to climate change. Therefore, he acquired the name "green lung" of the planet.
The Pantanal, part of which lies in the south-west of Brazil, is the world's largest wetland, home to thousands of plant and animal species, many of which are rare.
Devastating wildfires last year devastated nearly a quarter of the Pantanal region, which continues to spread in Bolivia and Paraguay; the region has been hit by the worst drought in almost half a century.
Footage of a scorched landscape and dead animals shocked the world, and Brazil's government, led by a far-right president, faced criticism for not stop the destruction. An image from last year where a group of volunteers from the ranks of veterinarians and biologists is working to rescue animals that have suffered injuries during fires.
Jair Bolsonaro, who is among the skeptics on climate change, says many favor economic interests over environmental ones.
Under his rule, deforestation of the Amazon soared, which was not stopped by the coronavirus pandemic. From August 2019 to last August, according to INPE, a forest larger than Jamaica (which is comparable to the Central Bohemian Region) disappeared in the Amazon, a 12-year record.
Experts attribute the fires in the Amazon to largely people trying to expand land for agriculture, mining or wood. Climate change is contributing to the spread of fires, according to environmentalists.
A view of burnt soil in a village located in Altamira (Brazilian state of Para), which is free of pasture after the fires. Milk, meanwhile, is one of the few sources of income for the local population. Small-scale farmers are now waiting for rain to make their land fertile again.
Pictured in 2012, a man carries a basket of charcoal made from illegally mined wood from the Amazon rainforest in brazil's Rondon to Para region. NGOs have demonstrated that illegal charcoal mining has sometimes led to slave labor and the destruction of rainforest in protected indigenous areas. Between 2003 and 2011, 2,700 workers were freed from conditions similar to slavery, according to Greenpeace.
The Amazon rainforest is also decimating gold seekers who cut down forests and pollute mercury rivers used in the separation of gold. According to The Guardian, the damage they are doing has increased since Jair Bolsonaro took office. An image from the Brazilian forest from 2007.
Bolsonaro, meanwhile, promised to legalize the work of gold miners in indigenous reserves, some of the Best Protected Areas of the Amazon, and last February his cabinet proposed a bill to parliament.
A soy plantation in the Amazon rainforest near the city of Santarém.
Pictured, indigenous residents of Kayap block the BR-163 motorway and prevent vehicles from passing through They are demonstrating against poor health care in the fight against coronavirus in indigenous settlements. But the protest also goes against the lack of updating of the basic environmental plan and the government's unwillingness to discuss planned constructions affecting their territory. August 17, Brazil, Novo Progresso.
Replacing the forest with farmland is also probably one of the key factors that has resulted in another environmental problem. The destruction of the Amazon rainforest is believed to have contributed to the overgive of algae that wash up in tons on the Mexican, Caribbean, Florida, and other coasts.
The felled forest is replaced by heavily fertile agricultural land. Fertilizer ends up in the Amazon River and eventually in the Atlantic, where it floods the ocean with nutrients such as nitrogen. As a result, this leads to an overgreading of brown seaweed in the Mid-Atlantic region.
This Article Originally Published in seznamzpravy
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