The number of wildfires in the Brazilian Amazon hit a near 15-year high this week, according to official figures that provided the latest warning of ongoing destruction of the world’s largest rainforest.
According to the Brazilian space agency INPE, satellite surveillance detected 3,358 fires as of Monday August 22, the highest number in a 24-hour period since September 2007.
The number was almost three times higher than the so-called “Day of the Fire” – August 10, 2019 – when farmers embarked on a coordinated plan to burn vast amounts of felled rainforest in northern Para state.
Fires then sent thick gray smoke to Sao Paulo, some 2,500 kilometers away, and sparked a global outcry over images of one of the earth’s most vital resources burning.
There is no indication Monday’s fires were coordinated, said Alberto Setzer, head of the INPE’s fire monitoring program.
Rather, they seem to fit into a pattern of increasing deforestation and burning, he said.
Experts say fires in the Amazon are mostly caused by illegal farmers, ranchers and speculators clearing land and burning trees.
In Brazil, the so-called “deforestation arc” is progressing.
“The regions where it burns the most are moving further and further north,” said Setzer of the AFP news agency.
“The ‘arc of deforestation’ is undoubtedly evolving.”
August typically marks the start of fire season in the Amazon with the arrival of drier weather.
This has been a worrying year so far for the forest, a key buffer against global warming: INPE detected 5,373 fires last month, up eight percent from July last year.
And with 24,124 fires so far this month, it is on track to become the worst August under President Jair Bolsonaro — although well below the 63,764 fires detected in August 2005, the worst for the month since records began in 1998 .
Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, is facing international criticism over a wave of destruction of the Amazon under his watch. Since taking office in January 2019, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade.
The right-wing extremist President rejects this criticism.
“None of those who attack us have the right. If they wanted to call a pretty forest their own, they should have kept those in their countries,” he wrote on Twitter on Thursday.
“The Amazon belongs to the Brazilians and will always remain so.”
But with Bolsonaro running for re-election in October, the destruction threatens to accelerate, said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).
“We know from previous years that there is a link between elections and deforestation,” she said, as officials and law enforcement agencies are distracted by the campaign.
This year, “we have high rates of deforestation … and there are still many felled trees waiting to be burned.”
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