Scientists were expecting a rise of maybe 2% this year. It turned out to be 6%.
It was the second-worst annual destruction total to the "world's lung" on record.
The record was set a decade ago.
May 18, 2005
Amazon Deforestation Up 6 Percent in 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:24 p.m. ET
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) -- Deforestation in the Amazon rain forest in 2004 was the second worst ever, figures released by the Brazilian government showed Wednesday. Satellite photos and data showed that ranchers, soybean farmers and loggers burned and cut down a near-record area of 10,088 square miles of rain forest in the 12 months ending in August 2004, the Brazilian Environmental Ministry said.
The destruction was nearly 6 percent higher than in the same period the year before, when 9,500 square miles were destroyed.
(more below...)
The deforestation hit record numbers in 1995, when the Amazon shrank a record 11,200 square miles, an area roughly the size of Belgium or the American state of Massachusetts.
The Amazon forest -- which sprawls over 1.6 million square miles and covers more than half the country -- is a key component of the global environment. The jungle is sometimes called the world's ''lung'' because its billions of trees produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Environmentalists were shocked with the new figures, which were announced nearly a year after the Brazilian government announced a $140 million package to curtail destruction.
[snip]
Government officials were expecting an increase in destruction of only about 2 percent.
[snip]
Brazil's rain forest is as big as western Europe and covers 60 percent of the country's territory. Experts say as much as 20 percent of its 1.6 million square miles has already been destroyed by development, logging and farming.
[snip]
When are we going to start taking our one and only home seriously? This shit can change our lives, fast.