Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon reached record high in February

Brasília, Mar 3 (Prensa Latina) The accumulated deforestation alerts in the Brazilian Legal Amazon was 291 square kilometers (km²) in February, the highest mark for the month in the entire historical series, started in 2015, it was announced today.

The data released by the Institute for Space Research (INPE) are supported by the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (Detener), which produces daily signals of alteration in forest cover for areas larger than three hectares (0.03 km²).

Such indications occur for totally deforested areas as well as for those in the process of wild degradation (logging, mining, burning and others).

The Deter is not the official deforestation data, but an alert on where the problem is occurring.

The Legal Amazon corresponds to 59 percent of the national territory and includes the total area of eight states (Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins) and part of Maranhão.

The G1 portal assures that since December, January, February and March are rainy months in most of the states that are part of the biome, deforestation rates are typically lower during these months.

However, last month experts pointed out that INPE’s numbers for this year should be interpreted with caution, as January registered high cloud cover and a consequent drop in the period’s figures, now reflected in a rise in February.

‘The escalation in the area deforested in the first days of February should be viewed with caution.

Marco Astrini, Executive Secretary of the Climate Observatory believes that the current administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva adopted correct measures against deforestation, but the ‘work of rebuilding, putting the house in order is slower, more difficult than the destruction of the previous government’ of the defeated president Jair Bolsonaro