The Brazilian Amazon Lost 3,987 SQ KM of Vegetation

On Friday, Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) revealed that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon broke a record in the first half of the year with 3,987 square kilometers of devastated vegetation, 10.6 percent more than the same period in 2021.

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The area of ​​lost vegetation is equivalent to 483 soccer fields. In June alone, 1,120 square kilometers of native vegetation were destroyed in that region of the country, 5.5 percent more than in the same month of 2021.

These are the highest rates -for the month and for the semester- registered since 2016, when the measurement began. The data corresponds to the Legal Amazon Deforestation Detection System in Real Time (DETER), which uses satellite images to offer early warnings about the areas that are being deforested in the Amazon.

This system captures monthly deforestation alarms in Brazil and differs from the PRODES system, which only issues annual information between August and July of the following year, which is considered the reference period for measuring environmental devastation.

However, the figures are beginning to worry as the trend shows that the deforestation of the jungle will grow for the fourth consecutive year, something that environmentalists attribute to the lack of controls and supervision of President Jair Bolsonaro's administration to stop the activities that end with the forest, such as illegal mining or the illicit trade in wood.

In fact, the far-right politician defends the exploitation of natural resources in the Amazon and in indigenous territories, where the law prohibits extractive activities.

Since Bolsonaro came to power in January 2019, the rates of devastation in the jungle have increased by 73 percent to reach 13,038 square kilometers in 2021. In 2018, a year before the former Capitan took office, only 7,536 square kilometers of jungle were devastated.

The largest tropical forest on the planet concentrates 72 percent of Brazil's mining extraction and 99 percent of the wood sold by the country is illegally extracted from the Amazon.