Forest cleared for mining in the Brazilian AmazonMarcio Isensee e Sá/Getty Images The amount of tropical forest lost in 2024 was double that in 2023 and the highest in at least two decades as climate change made rainforests susceptible to uncontrollable fires. A record 67,000 square kilometres of primary rainforest was lost from the tropics in 2024, according to an annual assessment of satellite imagery by Global Forest Watch and the University of Maryland. Primary forest refers to mature forest that has never been disturbed by logging. Advertisement The report’s authors attributed the surge in forest loss to the El Niño weather phenomenon and the warming global climate, which made the rainforest a tinderbox. “We are in a new phase where it’s not just clearing for agriculture that’s the main driver,” says Rod Taylor at Global Forest Watch, an initiative of the World Resources Institute. “Now we have this new amplifying effect, which is the real climate change feedback loop, where fires are much more intense and ferocious than they have ever been.” Tropical forests regulate weather systems and store carbon, cooling the planet, but in recent years deforestation has brought them to a tipping point at which they sometimes emit more carbon than they absorb, creating a feedback loop. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter Five times more primary forest was lost from fires in the tropics in 2024 than in 2023, accounting for 48 per cent of all primary rainforest loss, the report found. Globally, fires caused greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 4.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide last year, more than four times the amount from air travel in 2023. El Niño events are associated with warmer and drier weather in tropical regions. Although El Niño officially subsided in April 2024, its effects continued to be felt as rainforest soils and vegetation remained dried out from scorching temperatures and previous wildfires. The world’s warming climate also played a role, with 2024 the hottest year on record and Brazil’s driest in seven decades, says Ane Alencar at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Belém, Brazil. Brazil lost 28,000 km² of primary forest – its highest figure since 2016 – accounting for 42 per cent of all tropical primary forest loss. In the Brazilian Amazon, fires accounted for 60 per cent of forest loss, as people exploited dry conditions to clear land for agriculture. There were also massive wildfires outside the tropics in countries such as Canada and Russia. Globally, the area of forest lost was 300,000 km², another new record. “Some scientists say we’re not in the Anthropocene but the Pyrocene – the age of fire – and I think this report shows that,” says Erika Berenguer at the University of Oxford. While forest fires are concerning, Berenguer cautions that the figures may include degradation, where some of the tree canopy is lost, and this should not be conflated with deforestation, where forest is cleared entirely. “Degradation reduces carbon storagebiodiversity and increases vulnerability to future fires, but it’s not the same as transforming land into a soy field or pasture,” she says. The report shows how successive years of degradation and the warming climate have made the rainforest fragile, says Alencar. “Usually with fires in the Amazon, you see degradation, but the forest can recover,” she says. “However, this report shows that when you have a very strong drought it creates the perfect conditions for the forest to burn intensely and you reach a point where the forest is lost entirely.” Topics: #tropical #forest #loss #doubled #wildfires

‘Out of Africa’ champagne picnic experience during a Masai Mara luxury safari, Kenya. All images © Zed Nelson, courtesy of Guest Editions, shared with permission In His New Book, Photographer Zed Nelson Lifts the Veil on ‘The Anthropocene Illusion’ May 13, 2025 Kate Mothes In the 1985 film Out of Africa starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, a picturesque scene highlights the pair on a romantic picnic high above the sweeping Masai Mara National Reserve. Today, tourists are invited to recreate the iconic moment in a colonial-inspired, hillside champagne picnic experience for which “local Masaai tribesman are employed to provide picturesque authenticity to the experience,” photographer Zed Nelson says. In his new book, The Anthropocene Illusion, Nelson takes us on a global journey that lifts the veil, so to speak, on what we think of as “wilderness” and our progressively uneasy relationship with the environment. “While we destroy the natural world around us, we have become masters of a stage-managed, artificial ‘experience’ of nature—a reassuring spectacle, an illusion,” he says. The Anthropocene defines the ever-evolving, rapid changes to the environment due to humans’ unyielding impact. Many scientists place the epoch’s origin during the Industrial Revolution, but some consider 1945—the year humans tested the atomic bomb—to be the true beginning. Yet others suggest that the Anthropocene was initiated even earlier, during the advent of agriculture. At that point, we entered into an increasingly uneasy relationship with the natural world, relying on ever-more extractive processes, heavy manufacturing, plastics, and advancing technology—all of which depend on the earth’s resources. Our societies’ colonialist tendencies also apply to nature just as much as other human-occupied territories. We’re depleting entire aquifurs, forever altering the composition of the land, and irretrievably damaging delicate ecosystems. All the while, Nelson shows, we subscribe to a nostalgic view of untamed wilderness while at the same time expecting it to mold to our lifestyles. In Kenyan national parks like Masai Mara, wildlife is provided sanctuary, “but the animals living within them are allowed to survive essentially for human entertainment and reassurance,” Nelson says. “These animals become, in effect, performers for paying tourists eager to see a nostalgic picture book image of the natural world.” Snow cannon producing artificial snow at Val Gardena ski resort, Dolomites, Italy Nelson’s illuminating series taps into the absurdities of the illusion that nature is still thriving as it once was. Artificial snow shot from a cannon in the Italian Dolomites, for example, nods to warmer winters. A result of the climate crisis, leading to little snow, the powder is manufactured so holidaymakers can ski. From vine-draped brutalist buildings to overcrowded national park lookouts to half-tame lions walked out like entertainers during a safari, he shares moments that feel skewed and incongruous, indicating looming and ultimately inescapable problems behind the veneer. The Anthropocene Illusion series took first place in the professional category of the 2025 Sony World Photography Awards, and the book, which comes out this month, is available for pre-order in the Guest Editions shop. Ten percent of profits will be donated to Friends of the Earth, an environmental justice nonprofit. See more on Nelson’s Instagram. ‘Walk with Lions’ tourist experience, South Africa Next article Source: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/05/zed-nelson-the-anthropocene-illusion/ #his #new #book #photographer #zed #nelson #lifts #the #veil #anthropocene #illusion