Ashleigh Cummings Instagram – The “lungs of our earth” are on fire. If our earth can’t breathe, neither can we. Did you know this ecosystem ALONE provides 20% of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere & 10% of all known species? It is vital to ALL life on Earth. Swipe right to find out ways you can help… like reducing your consumption of animal products (most of these fires were initially lit to clear land for cattle) or even go plant-based (but check your soy and almond sources)! And support indigenous communities who are at the forefront of this fight (they’re fighting for ALL of us! See tags below)… Know that your voices & actions really do matter – on both an individual & political scale 💚 @guajajarasonia @coiabamazonia @amazonwatch @amazonconservationteam @amazonfrontlines @greenpeacebrasil @ConservationOrg #PeopleNeedNature Excerpts from an array of literature on the matter… (not my words!) Wildfires often occur in the dry season in Brazil, but this year has been worse than normal. Fires are deliberately started in efforts to illegally deforest land for cattle ranching. 72,000 fires have been detected between January and August & more than 9,500 forest fires since Thursday, mostly in the Amazon region. In comparison, there were fewer than 40,000 in the whole of 2018. So the two scariest numbers for understanding the fires are this: There are 80 percent more fires this year than there were last summer, according to the Brazilian government. This surge in burning has accompanied a spike in deforestation. More than 1,330 square miles of the Amazon rainforest have been lost since January, a 39% increase over the same period last year, according to The New York Times. Why are these figures so important? Because Brazil’s political leadership has changed in the past year. On January 1, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who has openly pined for his country’s authoritarian past, was sworn in as president. During his campaign, he promised to weaken the Amazon’s environmental protections—which have been effective at reducing deforestation for the past two decades—and open up the rainforest to economic development. (Cntd in comments)