Criminals may be leveraging climate change as record acreage burns in Brazil's Amazon
Brazil’s Amazon dry season just ended with a staggering 846% increase in burned forest area compared to the year before
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Wildfires in Brazil have swept through an area the size of Switzerland, a level of destruction that will take decades to recover, if it ever does, according to a new satellite assessment.
The breadth of forest that has been lost or degraded was revealed as smoke that has blanketed the country cleared, thanks to rains that may be ending the worst drought Brazil has ever recorded.
“The data is exceptionally alarming, it's a very abrupt surge,” Ane Alencar, science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, a Brazilian nonprofit, told The Associated Press.
The area that burned between January and mid-October 2024 represents an 846% increase over the same period in 2023. That's five times larger than the forest fires of 2019 when, under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, rampant destruction of the Amazon made headlines worldwide.
