Nearly 3,000 fires in Brazil's Amazon in February, a new record

(Patria) - Nearly 3,000 forest fires have been recorded this month in the Brazilian Amazon, the highest number for February since records began in 1999, AFP reported.

The Brazilian National Institute for Space Research INPE said on Wednesday that its satellites had captured 2,940 fires so far this month, 67 percent more than the previous maximum of 1,761 recorded in February 2007 and four times more than in the same month last year.

"The climate factor certainly plays a fundamental role in this anomaly," said Ane Alencar, scientific director of the IPAM Amazonia research institute.

"We have seen the Earth breaking temperature records. Every year is the hottest year and that has a synergy with climate phenomena" such as droughts, Alencar said.

Drought devastated the Brazilian Amazon between June and November last year, causing massive fires, reducing or destroying large water reserves, leaving a trail of destruction among wildlife and affecting millions of people. Such ecological "stress," Alencar said, "creates all the necessary conditions for any fire to become a large fire," adding that some of the fires may have been the result of deforestation for agriculture.

Deforestation halved

Figures released last month show that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon halved last year as the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stepped up environmental protection.

Satellite monitoring revealed 5,152 square kilometers of forest cover destroyed in the Brazilian part of the rainforest last year, a 50 percent decrease compared to 2022.

After defeating right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections, leftist Lula took office on January 1, 2023, promising that "Brazil is back" as a partner in the fight against climate change. He pledged to end illegal logging in Brazil by 2030. Agribusiness ally Bolsonaro drew international criticism for an average annual deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon of 75 percent compared to the previous decade.