Every minute in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, more than three football fields worth of forest is reportedly being destroyed.
The Guardian, citing government data, reports that the dense and sprawling jungle lost about 519 square miles so far in July, a third higher than the previous monthly record. With days remaining in the month, Brazil is on track to lose an area of rainforest larger than Greater London in July. The deforestation is monitored by a satellite system that began doing so in 2015.
Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research, warned that the Amazon is in a perilous position. Scientists worry that as the forest shrinks, its ability to absorb carbon will be diminished.
“It’s very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away,” Fearnside said. “We can’t see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately, that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem.”
Deforestation has risen under recently elected Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, 64, whose foreign minister once denounced climate science as part of a global Marxist plot. There are concerns that his government has allowed illegal logging and burning in the Amazon.
The Amazon stretches across multiple South American countries, but a majority of it is located within Brazil. It is the most biodiverse tropical rainforest in the world.
