In the Amazon, Brazil has made huge gains in its battle against deforesters, but is increasingly losing ground to another threat – climate change. Amid this year’s widespread drought, the number of forest fires has reached a 20-year high, official figures show.
From January to June, Brazil recorded 13,489 forest fires in the Amazon, according to satellite data from the national space agency. That is 61 percent more fires than during the first half of last year. And the wildfire season has not yet reached its peak, which usually occurs in August or September.
“We are seeing fires this year that started in recently deforested grassland or rainforest and then spread into surrounding areas of rainforest that are burning hundreds of square kilometers,” said NASA researcher Shane Coffield, who studies forest fires in Brazil. “These are huge wildfires.”
The fires were stocked by an ongoing drought, which scientists say is linked to climate change and was exacerbated by El Niño. As warming intensifies, other regions are also seeing fires multiply. Government data shows that, in the first half of this year, the dry Cerrado region and the wetlands of the Pantanal recorded record numbers of forest fires.
At the same time, deforestation in the Amazon fell 42% year over year, reflecting a repression by the president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva about the deforestation of forests by farmers and ranchers.
In the future, the worsening of fires could reverse the gains made under Lula. Writing in Ecology and Evolution of Naturea group of scientists recently warned that increasingly serious fires “threaten both the real advances in forest protection made by the Lula administration and pose a second threat – weakening the public’s perception of Lula’s commitment to protecting the region.”
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