Deforestation continued to surge in the Brazilian Amazon last month, according to official figures released Friday, showing it was the worst May and worst first five months of the year on record.
"We are facing a scenario of total catastrophe for the Amazon," Mariana Napolitano, scientific director at the World Wildlife Fund's Brazil office, said in a statement.A total of 829 square kilometres in the Brazilian Amazon, 14 times the area of Manhattan, was lost to deforestation in May, according to satellite data from Brazil's National Space Research Institute .
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is now at more than 2,000 square kilometres so far this year, up 34 per cent from the same period last year. Activists accuse Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right climate change skeptic, of emboldening those responsible for deforestation with calls to legalise farming and mining on protected lands.
This deforestation will have a serious effect on the future of civilization. It is a world problem and the world must take action to stop it.
Rainforest matters
White Europeans at it again. Indirectly destroying our planet.
I could have hugged all those trees 😭