Brazil's Amazon rainforest is burning, with more than one-and-a-half soccer fields worth of rainforest destroyed every minute of every day, according to the country's space research center.
While the country's farmers and cattle ranchers have long used slash-and-burn techniques -- when blazes clear land to ready it for other purposes -- an 80% rise in deforestation since last year signals a disturbing shift in a political ethos. Environmental activists attribute that to one big change: The election of the country's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
Less than a month before he began his post, Salles was convicted of altering environmental maps to benefit mining companies during his post as Sao Paulo's Environmental Secretary in 2016.Salles said at the time that he was planning to appeal the ruling, Reuters reported.
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