Supermodel Gisele Bundchen bemoans Amazon fires: ‘We cannot close our eyes’

Supermodel Gisele Bundchen  (Image: Instagram/@gisele)

Brazilian supermodel and environmentalist Gisele Bundchen lamented the fires that continue to rage in the Amazon rainforest.

A global alarm has been raised after fires continued to break out in Brazil this year. Brazil’s National Space Research Institute has recorded 83,000 fires in the country as of August, a 77% increase from 2018, and most of them are in already deforested areas in the Amazon.

Bundchen, who hails from Brazil, joined the outcry on social media and bemoaned the Amazon fires via Instagram last Aug. 22. 

“The forest plays a key role in balancing the Earth’s climate and consequently in our lives. We cannot close our eyes to what is happening in the Amazon,” Bundchen said in a post of a photo of an Amazon fire from 2003. “The increased burnings have been destroying in days, what nature takes years, centuries to build.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1clE4AAZ2s/

The supermodel added she has spent a lot of time in Brazil and “was able to see closely how everything happens.”

“Deforestation in the Amazon [has] been going on for [years] and this has to stop…for our health and the health of our planet!” said Bundchen.

Scientists have been using National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellites to track the fires in the Amazon and confirmed last Aug. 19 their increase in number and intensity. As per NASA’s earth observatory, this has been the most active fire year in the Amazon since 2010.

Amazon Environmental Research co-founder Paulo Moutinho recently said the fires are mostly set to clear land for farming, ranching or logging.

“It is very difficult to have natural fires in the Amazon,” Moutinho said. “It happens but the majority come from the hand of humans.”  /ra

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