Amazon rainforest fires increase is a 'bad sign'

Amazon fires in 2019 caught the world's attention

Fires in South America's Amazon rainforest rose by a fifth (20%) last month, according to data from the Brazilian government.

The 2,248 fires in the rainforest in June were a 13-year-high.

It is the equivalent of around 75 fires a day being detected.

"It's a bad sign, but what really is going to count is what happens from now on," said Philip Fearnside, who works as an ecologist at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research.

June marks the start of the dry season in the region, which has led experts to warn that this year could be worse than last year when fires hit a peak of 30,901 in August - or around 1,000 a day.

"The Amazon is in flames" - last year's fires led to widespread protests

"We cannot allow the 2019 situation to repeat itself," Mauricio Voivodic, who works for the World Wildlife Fund in Brazil, told a newspaper there.

There are fears heavy deforestation is contributing to the fires, with data from Brazil's space research agency, INPE, saying they had already seen a third (34%) more in the first five months of 2020, compared to last year.

''Deforestation in 2020 is going to be larger than it was in 2019," warned Carlos Soza, from Brazil's Institute of People and the Environment of the Amazon.

"There is additional worry for deforestation which has to do with the risk of there being burning to clear land without control as we had in 2019 and the same happening in 2020.''