“It’s entirely unlikely to me," says Professor Rodney Keenan, Climate Change and Global Forest Assessment specialist at the University of Melbourne. "It wouldn’t be in the interest of the NGOs - setting fires in areas they are very keen to protect.”
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has claimed that conservationist NGOs may have started fires still burning on the Western edge of the region in an effort to embarrass him after their funding was cut.
A large number of fires are currently burning in the largest rainforest in the world, and have reached a record total number this year. Brazil's space research center, INPE, has detected 72,843 fires so far in 2019, an 83 per cent increase from 2018, the agency says.
Professor Keenan says that according to NASA, which has been monitoring the Amazon for decades, the number of fires this year is higher compared to last year but it is about average taking into account a longer-term period of the last 15 years.
“Fires are uncommon in this region," he says. "The troubling matter is that the clearing rate has gone up again, it was on a downward trend [but] over the last year or so the clearing of the Amazon and in other parts of Brazil, like the Caatinga forest, has started to increase.”
Professor Keenan says that forest fires in rainforests are very rare, so it is generally fire started by humans that sees them burn, as in the present case of the Amazon.
Any recovery of the burnt areas depends on what happens soon after the fire, too. Rainforests that have burnt once can potentially recover, but forests cleared after a fire for locals to grow crops or pasture for cattle can take years.
“It depends what happens after the fire, but if there’s a lot of fires it could take 100 or up to 200 years for the forest to recover,” he says.
According to Professor Keenan it is important to keep the existing area intact, and very carefully plan any clearing that does take place for agriculture.
“It is important to remember this is a huge area, 538 million hectares, 60 per cent of that in Brazil. The area is equivalent to South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland combined in one area of forest which has significant global importance. But there’s also people living those areas that need to make a living and want to convert part of that area to do that.
“The important thing is to have good planning so areas that are of high conservation value are protected and the clearing is restricted to areas that have previously been impacted.”
The Amazon is resilient and Professor Keenan says that its ecosystem has evolved to recover from significant disturbances, such as human-caused fire, natural fires or geological activity.
“There’s evidence forests can recover and are quite resilient, but if you lose resources and have repeated fires, then the forest will be permanently affected,” he says.
