a newspaper report about fire in Amazon in about 150 words
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Over the last several days, the Amazon rainforest has been burning at a rate that has alarmed environmentalists and governments worldwide. Mostly caused by farmers clearing land, the fires have thrown the spotlight on Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies and anti-environment stance. Thousands of fires are ravaging the Amazon rainforest in Brazil – the most intense blazes for almost a decade. Brazil declared a state of emergency over the rising number of fires in the region. So far this year, almost 73,000 fires have been detected by Brazil’s space research center.
The Amazon rainforest stretches across 5.5 million square kilometers, an area far larger than the EU. The Amazon rainforest home to one in 10 species on Earth is on fire. As of last week, 9,000 wildfires were raging simultaneously across the vast rainforest of Brazil and spreading into Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru. The Amazon rainforest is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru with 13%, Colombia with 10%, and with minor amounts in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and France (French Guiana). The blazes, largely set intentionally to clear land for cattle ranching, farming, and logging, have been exacerbated by the dry season. They’re now burning in massive numbers, an 80 percent increase over this time last year, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The fires can even be seen from space.
According to Brazil’s space research center (INPE), the country has seen an 80% increase in fires this year, compared with the same period last year. According to INPE, more than half were in the Amazon region, spelling disaster for the local environment and ecology and 99% percent of the fires result from human actions “either on purpose or by accident”. The weekly Brasil de fato reported that Bolsonaro’s anti-environment rhetoric has emboldened farmers, who organised a “fire day” along BR-163, a highway that runs through the heart of the rainforest. The weekly quoted a report by local newspaper, that local farmers had set fire to sections of the rainforest a few days ago to get the government’s attention. While the Amazon rainforest is typically wet and humid, July and August are the onset of the dry season (the region’s driest months). Fire is often used to clear out the land for farming or ranching. For that reason, a vast majority of the fires can be attributed to humans.
Fires are set deliberately and spread easily in the dry season. The desire for new land for cattle farming has been the main driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon since the 1970s. The devastating loss of biodiversity does not just affect Brazil. The loss of Amazonian vegetation directly reduces rain across South America and other regions of the world. The planet is losing an important carbon sink, and the fires are directly injecting carbon into the atmosphere. If we can’t stop deforestation in the Amazon, and the associated fires, it raises real questions about our ability to reach the Paris Agreement to slow climate change. The growing numbers of fires are the result of illegal forest clearing to create land for farming.