by FABI­ANO MAISON­NAVE

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — De­for­esta­tion in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon dur­ing the first half of 2022 broke all records, a mea­sure of the in­creas­ing de­struc­tion tak­ing place un­der the pres­i­den­cy of Jair Bol­sonaro.

Satel­lite im­ages tak­en be­tween Jan­u­ary and June show 4,000 square kilo­me­ters (1,500 square miles) of for­est de­stroyed, more than in any six month pe­ri­od in the sev­en years of record-keep­ing un­der the cur­rent method­ol­o­gy. The ex­tent is four times the size of New York City.

What makes the sta­tis­tic more re­mark­able is that the for­est cut­ting is tak­ing place dur­ing the rainy sea­son. De­for­esta­tion is his­tor­i­cal­ly high­er in the dri­er sec­ond half of the year when it is eas­i­er to ac­cess re­mote ar­eas on the re­gion’s un­paved roads.

Brazil al­so will hold pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Oc­to­ber, which typ­i­cal­ly re­duces law en­force­ment in the Ama­zon. Bol­sonaro will run for a sec­ond 4-year term. Cur­rent­ly he is trail­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va in polls.

The area de­stroyed in the first half of 2022 is 80% larg­er than the same pe­ri­od in 2018, the year be­fore Bol­sonaro took of­fice, ac­cord­ing to an analy­sis from the Ama­zon En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute, or IPAM, a Brazil­ian non­prof­it.

Around half of the felling oc­curred on pub­lic lands, ac­cord­ing to the IPAM analy­sis. The pat­tern in Brazil is that crim­i­nals seize pub­lic land ex­pect­ing that the ar­eas will be le­gal­ized for agri­cul­ture or cat­tle-rais­ing in the fu­ture.

Oth­er il­le­gal re­al es­tate and tim­ber trans­ac­tions plus lack of en­force­ment con­tribute to the in­creas­ing de­for­esta­tion rates, ac­cord­ing to Ane Alen­car, IPAM’s sci­ence di­rec­tor.

“Those who con­trol the Ama­zon don’t want it pre­served,” Alen­car told the As­so­ci­at­ed Press in a phone in­ter­view. “The stand­ing for­est has no val­ue in to­day’s Ama­zon.”

The most ra­pa­cious cut­ting took place in Ama­zonas state, over­tak­ing both Para and Ma­to Grosso, which his­tor­i­cal­ly reg­is­ter more tree loss. That is a wor­ri­some trend, as Ama­zonas is deep in the rain­for­est and has re­mained pris­tine rel­a­tive to oth­er Ama­zon re­gions.

______

As­so­ci­at­ed Press cli­mate and en­vi­ron­men­tal cov­er­age re­ceives sup­port from sev­er­al pri­vate foun­da­tions. See more about AP’s cli­mate ini­tia­tive here. The AP is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for all con­tent.

Source:As­so­ci­at­ed Press