Number of Wildfires in Brazil Increase!

Rio de Janeiro, Jan 3 (AFP/APP): The number of wildfires in Brazil increased 12.7 percent last year to a decade-high, according to official figures likely to add to pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro’s government over the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

There were a total of 222,798 wildfires across Brazil in 2020, the highest number since 2010, according to the Brazilian space agency, INPE.

That included more than 103,000 fires in the Brazilian Amazon, an annual increase of nearly 16 percent, said INPE, which uses satellite images to track fires and deforestation. It also included more than 22,000 fires in Brazil’s share of the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetlands, which were devastated last year by an annual increase of more than 120 percent.

The Amazon and Pantanal are two of Earth’s most valuable ecosystems. The Amazon, the world’s biggest rainforest, is considered vital to curbing climate change because of the carbon dioxide it absorbs from the atmosphere. About 60 percent of the rainforest is in Brazil.

The Pantanal, further south, is a paradise of biodiversity that stretches from Brazil into Bolivia and Paraguay.

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