Forest Fires

Forest fires in Brazil have skyrocketed since 2019 reaching a number of 47 thousand points of fire in the State of Mato Grosso in 2020, a 250% rise when compared to the previous year.

 

Due to heavy agriculture, the lands that once held large rainforests and savannahs, now are filled with soy and cotton plantations or are being overtaken by landgrabbers for illegal mining and deforestation for precious wood. Heavy agriculture also brings another downside: in order to clean vast farming fields in a small time, many farmers use fire as their main tool. However, due to Mato Grosso's characteristic high winds, and dry climate many fires get out of control right away and spread through dozens of kilometers destroying wildlife and forests all around the region.

 

This practice puts Mato Grosso in the top ranks for forest fires in Brazil. The state is part of the Amazon region and is one of the main degraded regions of the biome. With the very aggressive advance of cattle for grazing land, agriculture, and illegal mining, the region has become famous in the last few years due to its large forest fires.

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These photos are part of an ongoing long-term project about the forest fires in the Amazon biomes and how they affect nature and wildlife.

This project is currently on GoFundme, you can support it here: https://gofund.me/8ee2030d

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