Huge Wildfires In Amazon
Scientists and environmental groups have expressed alarm after new data revealed there were 28 percent more fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest this July compared with the same time last year. Satellite images released by Brazil’s space research agency INPE on Saturday revealed 6,803 fires in the Amazon last month. There were 5,318 in July 2019.
“I am super concerned,” Erika Berenguer, an Amazon ecologist and a senior research associate at Britain’s University of Oxford, told Earthlanka team. Adding that she was “alarmed by the numbers,” Berenguer said that July was the beginning of “burning season” when areas which have been deforested have to be burned to clear the land. “This is an indicator that the rest of the burning season is going to be very intense,” she said. Her comments were echoed by Ane Alencar, science director at Brazil’s Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM). “It’s a terrible sign,” she told the Reuters press agency. “We can expect that August will already be a difficult month and September will be worse yet.”
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