Brazil: Wildfires threaten virgin Amazon rainforest

This year’s fire season is worse than usual in Brazil’s Amazon region, where fires have begun spreading into areas of virgin forest.

During the first week of September, more than 8,000 blazes were reported, about one-quarter of which are in virgin areas that have not been cleared or used as farmland.

These forest fires are “burning large amounts of biomass across the Brazilian Amazon”, according to Matt Finer, director of NGO Amazon Conservation.

Al Jazeera’s Monica Yanakiew reports From Rio de Janiero, Brazil.