NEWSLINK: As the Amazon Burns, Jaguars Burn With It

A jaguar’s fangs can pierce the armored skin of a crocodile, and its jaws can crush a croc’s skull. The cats are strong, quick, and cunning—but they’re no match for a wall of fire.


Over the past two months, farmers in Brazil have turned more than seven million acres of the world’s largest rainforest to ash through tens of thousands of fires, lit with the tacit approval of President Jair Bolsonaro. All cross the Amazon, the total 7,000 square miles of scorched earth is just smaller than the state of New Jersey. Burning “the lungs of the world” is an obvious nightmare for climate and air quality concerns, but scientists are also fearful of what it might mean for Amazonian wildlife.

The Amazon is home to an estimated one in ten species on earth, so the fires’ potential impact on biodiversity is enormous. Many of those plants and animals are also small, poorly known, or rarely seen, making it difficult to measure the true consequences of this ongoing disaster.

Read more...