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dioxide into the atmosphere can speed up the rate of climate change which is the most serious global issue . Imagining the release of even a fraction of this carbon dioxide amount is dreadful and consequences could be beyond devastating . As the world ’ s largest rainforest was eaten up by logging , mining , and agro-business , the forest ability has been greatly shattered . Scientists also warned that the rainforest could reach a tipping point where it could turn into something like Savanna and can no longer sustain itself as a rainforest . The fire decreased the forest ’ s ability to soak up as much carbon as it did before . Smoke from the fire got so bad that it seemed to turn day into night in Sao Paulo on August 20 . Likewise , a massive global study on air pollution found that among two dozen countries it observed , Brazil showed one of the sharpest increases in mortality rates whenever there was more soot in the air . As the trees and plants vanish , it results in the release of billions of tons of carbon that the forest stored for decades and consequently making it impossible to compensate for the impacts caused by released greenhouse gases in the atmosphere .
The world reacted with fury to the fires . Hollywood superstar and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio raised a question over the lack of media coverage of the ongoing fire at the Amazon rainforest . There were many protests in many cities against Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro including threats of financial penalties . In late August of 2019 , the president deployed the army to the Amazon and ordered a 60-day ban
on setting fires to clear land there . The preventive measure also had quite an effect . The number of fires in the Amazon dropped by a third between August and
September , and the pace of the fire also slowed down . It was also stated that the burning wasn ’ t the main issue , deforestation was . The science director of the non-profit Amazon Environmental Research Institute said that the measure was taken by the president only reduced the level of burning but not the level of deforestation . He also claimed that most of the deforestation in 2019 had already happened by the end of August . Nearly 7,747 square km of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest had been cleared in 2019 . Ane Alencar , the Director of Science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute also told that the rate at which deforestation was controlled in the past could prove that it could be done now too but sadly we are going backward . The rate at which the forest was chopped was 25 % more than the year before . So far , the number of fires also peaked as compared to the same period in 2018 .
This graph shows that the year 2019 had seen more than double the number of fires in Brazil than in 2013 . Amazon also had a significant number of fires in the year 2016 . It is estimated that over 906 thousand hectares of the forest within the Amazon biome have been lost to fires in 2019 . World Wide Fund suggests that if this kind of damage continues , Amazon will experience rising temperatures and a decrease in rainfall by 2050 . A drier environment like this could then turn 30 to 60 % of the rainforest into dry savanna . Not only will it become inhabitable for most of its current species , but it might also begin emitting carbon and contribute to climate change instead of preventing it .
Millions of wild and endangered animals were killed and largely affected . Iconic animals such as jaguars , ocelots , tapirs , sloths , river dolphins , macaws , parrots , and anacondas along with pets were at grave risk as the fire continued to spike through the Amazon rainforest . Being a home to nearly 427 mammal species , 1,300 bird species , 378 reptile species , and more than 400 amphibian species , concerns , and urgent action is definitely needed by the Brazilian government to stop such disaster before it reaches a point of no return .
Source : National Institute for Space Research
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Nature and Social Concern Society 55