Brazil: fires at their highest already in June, before the dry season

The fires in the Brazilian Amazon experienced the most devastating June since 2007, suggesting another dramatic dry season for the planet's largest rainforest, official data released Thursday.

Satellites from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) detected 2,308 fires, 2.3% more than in June last year (2,248).

Read also: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon at its highest for 12 years

The previous record for a month of June, which marks the start of the dry season, was set in 2007 (3519 outbreaks). A new record since 2007 was also set in May with 1,166 outbreaks. These figures confirm a trend, which, according to environmentalists, is encouraged by the positions taken by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in favor of opening up mining and agricultural activities in the Amazon.

, deplores the NGO Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) in a press release sent to AFP.

Over the whole of 2020, some 103,000 fires were recorded in the Amazon biome, an increase of 16% in one year, according to the INPE. These fires are the result of deforestation to make way for agriculture and cattle ranching, experts say. The Brazilian government this week issued a decree banning burning for four months and authorized the army to be sent to the Amazon to fight deforestation and illegal mining. Two strategies which, according to Greenpeace Brazil

Jair Bolsonaro recently pledged to the international community to eliminate illegal deforestation in Brazil by 2030, without announcing concrete measures to achieve this goal. Deforestation in the Amazon has recorded three successive annual records in recent years. Over the reference period August-July, 9,216 km2 were cleared between August 2019 and July 2020 (+ 34% over one year).