Brazil records 66% drop in Amazon deforestation in July

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by more than 66 percent last month from July 2022, officials said Thursday, crediting President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's push to protect the world's biggest rainforest. Environment Minister Marina Silva said the numbers showed the Lula government's deforestation crackdown was paying off, after years of surging destruction. Satellite monitoring by the national space agency's DETER surveillance program detected 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of forest cover destroyed in the Brazilian Amazon in July, officials said. That was a five-year low, down sharply from 1,487 square kilometers in July 2022. However, there was bleaker news from the Cerrado, a fragile, biodiverse tropical savanna south of the Amazon, where July deforestation increased by 26 percent year-on-year, to 612 square kilometers.