Satellites detected 9,045 fire hotspots in the Brazilian Amazon in the first half of October, 62% more than in the same period last year, amid a drought aggravated by El Niño. The increase contrasts with the fall in deforestation, which over the past year reached its lowest level since 1988.
The situation is particularly serious around Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, home to more than two million people, which has been covered in smoke for weeks with air quality among the worst in the world. On Saturday, civil defence sent a “severe alert” to residents’ mobile phones urging them to stay at home, and classes were suspended at some schools. The federal government deployed more than 300 firefighters and 11 aircraft to support the fire services.
According to Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, most of the fires are set deliberately, generally to clear land for cattle, and the drought has turned the forest into a tinderbox. Alencar noted that September was the second month with the fewest fires on record and that the situation changed after the first round of the presidential election on October 4, and suggested as a hypothesis that the expectation of a change of government may have played a role: “I think the prevailing thought is ‘we won’t be punished’.” The head of the federal environment agency Ibama, Jair Schmitt, told the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo that the police and the intelligence agency are investigating whether there is “something orchestrated and structured”.
Between August 2025 and July 2026, 3,355 square kilometres of the Amazon were deforested, 42% less than in the previous period and the lowest figure since 1988, against 11,600 square kilometres in 2022. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has set a target of zero deforestation by 2030.
The campaign of opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, who faces Lula in Sunday’s runoff, has used the smoke to criticise the government’s record. His programme proposes eliminating illegal deforestation by 2029 using artificial intelligence and satellite imagery. He has not responded to the researcher’s hypothesis.