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Record-breaking wildfires are burning across South America, and smoke now fills the skies over seven countries. It's at its worst in Brazil because more than half the land there is in drought. Julia Carneiro reports from Rio.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Portuguese).
JULIA CARNEIRO, BYLINE: A man films the fire approaching his home, terrified. "It's a hurricane of flames," he says, as the wind spreads the blaze beyond his fence. Scenes like this have spread on social media, as fires engulf large swathes of Brazil - cities covered in smoke, dark, hazy skies, the sun lit orange in the middle of the day. This is the combined effect of a historic drought, unusually high temperatures and human activity.
MARINA SILVA: (Speaking Portuguese).
CARNEIRO: Environment minister Marina Silva says using fire is forbidden across the country, but there are people committing, quote, "climate terrorism." In August, almost 14 million acres burned in Brazil. That's the size of Croatia - over twice the area affected in the same month last year.
ANE ALENCAR: What is different this year is that it's not only in the Amazon. It's vast areas of Brazil, other biomes at the same time, which also make it difficult to take action.
CARNEIRO: Ane Alencar is science director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, IPAM. She says some farmers use fire to renew pastures in Brazil, and in the dry weather, the flames go out of control.
ALENCAR: But we do have people using fire as a criminal tool, to actually degrade forests with the goal to actually claim the land.
CARNEIRO: This week, a dramatic fire erupted in the capital, destroying almost 5,000 acres in the Brasilia National Park next to the presidential residence. The city was covered in smoke, and schools were canceled. Brasilia faces the second-worst drought in its history. In Sao Paulo state, the powerful agribusiness lost $350 million, mostly from burnt sugarcane fields. Residents there have endured the worst air quality in the world in recent days.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Portuguese).
CARNEIRO: This has, of course, dear costs for the environment. In this campaign video, NGO Oncafari calls for donations to help rescue spotted jaguars in the Pantanal wetlands. "The fires are so strong," it says, "even these agile animals can't escape." Brazil's supreme court has authorized the government to bypass this year's fiscal target to fund emergency efforts, but successive climate crises are overstretching the country's resources at a time when the horizon is still thick with smoke.
For NPR News, I'm Julia Carneiro in Rio.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMURELY'S "BRAINWAVES") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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