Brazil's Bolsonaro calls Amazon fires a 'lie' despite surge in blazes
Rainforest too wet to catch fire, suggests far-right populist, dismissing evidence of his own government
Vincent Wood @wood_vincent
43 minutes ago
Smoke rises from a burnt area of land a the Xingu Indigenous Park, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, on 6 August 2020
( AFP/Getty )
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has insisted there are no fires in the Amazon rainforest, calling evidence produced by his own government showing thousands of blazes a “lie”.
The right-wing populist has long resisted evidence showing the world’s largest rainforest is being burnt - with logging and farming believed to be behind much of the destruction.
Brazil’s national space research agency Inpe has said fires across August reached a nine-year high in 2019, with researchers expecting the scale of the blazes to be even worse this year.
More than 10,000 fires have been recorded in the first 10 days of August, up 17 per cent per cent from the same period a year ago, according to the agency.
More:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brazil-amazon-rainforest-fires-jair-bolsonaro-environment-a9667766.html
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