The Amazon rainforest which is home to one in 10 species on Earth is on fire. Last week, 9,000 wildfires were raging all over Brazil then spreading into Boliva, Paruaguay and Peru. The blazes are deliberately set to clear land for cattle ranching, farming, and logging. They’re now burning in massive numbers, an 80 percent increase over this time last year.
For the thousands of reptiles, mammals, amphibians and all bird species that live in the Amazon rainforest, the wildfires’ impact will come in two phases: one immediate and one long-term.
“In the Amazon, nothing is adapted to fire,” says William Magnusson, a researcher specializing in biodiversity monitoring at the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) in Manaus, Brazil. With this information we can infer that pretty much everything will burn. Australia is different, for instance, where eucalyptus would die out without regular fires, he says. A number of man-made fires have spread across the Amazon in recent years, destroying the ecosystem. The rainforest is not built for fire.