'I thought the world was ending!' What's fueling the Amazon fires.
By Luciana Magalhaes and Samantha Pearson | Photographs and video by Dado Galdieri for The Wall Street Journal Aug. 31, 2019 12:01 am ET CANDEIAS DO JAMARI, Brazil—No one knows for sure how the fire started here off a two-lane highway called BR-364.
Drivers turned on their headlights, others panicked, and religious groups predicted the second coming of Jesus. “I thought the world was ending!” said Ozana Lopes, a cleaner. “The fire that burns the brightest is that of our own sovereignty over the Amazon,” Mr. Bolsonaro declared last week after accusing European leaders of neocolonialism.
“We are a government with a zero-tolerance policy on crime, and the environment will be no exception,” Mr. Bolsonaro said in a televised address last week. The stakes are also high for Brazil’s giant agribusiness sector, which accounts for roughly a fifth of the economy here. The owner of footwear brands Timberland and Vans said Thursday it would no longer buy Brazilian leather, adding to concerns among Brazilian agribusiness that Mr. Bolsonaro’s stance on the Amazon will cost them customers.
The number of fires, then, is a strong signal of deforestation. This year’s 43,421 fires in the Amazon region are more than double the 19,229 fires during the same period last year. It is the highest level since 2010, when a major drought caused a big spike. “The global objective here is to avoid a giant climate crisis with enormous consequences for the rest of the world,” said Mr. Nobre.
Deep in the Amazon, about half of which is federally protected, many Brazilians can’t see what all the fuss is about. Environmentalists have far more power over the forest than in decades past. Ibama, the forest protection agency, even has a commando-style unit that busts up illegal logging operations.
João Bosco, 73, owns 28,000 head of cattle in five ranches of about 9,000 acres each in Pará state, where deforestation and fires have been rampant for years. He has been in the area since 2002 and sells his production to nearby meatpackers, who export 30% of the production, he said.
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