The 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires season saw a year-to-year surge in fires occurring in the Amazon rainforest and Amazon biome within Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru during that year's Amazonian tropical dry season. Thousands of new fires have been started in the Amazon rainforest over the weekend as blazes continue to devastate huge parts of the region.

Then there are the Amazon's many small and slow mammals, such as the sloth. NatGeo explorer Andres Ruzo describes the fires in the Amazon rainforest after his most recent trip to Brazil. REUTERS/Bruno Kelly NOVO PROGRESSO — A maverick journalist in this isolated Brazilian ranching town warned his readers last month that the surrounding Amazon was about to go up in flames. Why the Amazon rainforest is burning Jump to media player The Amazon is a wet jungle, and hence should not burn - but over the last decade, vast areas of the Amazon have been lost to fire. "We need continued collaborative effort from governments, companies, and consumers to send a message. In the first 48 hours after the ban satellite data from the National Space Research Institute showed 3,859 new outbreaks of fire, 2,000 of which were concentrated in the Amazon … Smoke billows during a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil, Sept. 10, 2019. "The fires in the Amazon are the result of complicated political, financial, and social factors," said Henriette Walz, Deforestation Lead for the Rainforest Alliance. The Amazon Rainforest spreads over 5.5 million square kilometres, across nine South American countries: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. According to National Geographic, 17% of the Amazon rainforest has already been destroyed over the past 50 years due to deforestation.