Shocking satellite images show there are MORE wildfires raging in Africa than in the Amazon as blazes devastate the world’s ‘second green lung’
SHOCKING new satellite images show there are now MORE wildfires raging across Africa than in the flame-ravaged Amazon.
More than one million square miles of forest in the Congo Basin are now ablaze in an area known as the Earth's "second green lung."
In the startling NASA images, the fires appear to burn across the centre of the continent from Gabon to Angola.
At the G7 summit, President Emmanuel Macron tweeted about Africa's blazes revealing world leaders were examining a similar initiative to the one proposed to combat Brazil’s blazes.
"The forest is also burning in sub-Saharan Africa" he posted.
Over a period of two days last week Angola had roughly three times more fires than Brazil, according to data from the Weather Source.
The stats revealed there were 6,902 fires in Angola and 3,395 fires in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, compared with around 2,200 recorded fires in Brazil.
Like the Amazon, the African forests absorb CO2 and are sanctuaries for hundreds of endangered species.
Under pressure from environmentalists, G7 leaders this week vowed to take action against the Amazon blaze, but the African fires have so far attracted far less attention.
International leaders agreed to provide logistical and financial support to help tackle the raging fires in the the world's largest rain forest.
Mr Macron revealed G7 countries were prepared to release the £18m during a crunch meeting noticeably missed by Donald Trump.
However, Brazil's president rejected the cash and said Mr Macron's plan of an "alliance" to "save" the Amazon treated Brazil "as if we were a colony or no man's land".
The Congo Basin covers an area of 3.3 million square kilometres in several countries, including about a third in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the rest in Gabon, Congo, Cameroon and Central Africa.
However, most of the fires shown on the NASA maps of Africa are outside sensitive rain forest areas, analysts say, and drawing comparisons to the Amazon is not a straightforward affair.
MOUNTING FURY
“The question now is to what extent we can compare,” Philippe Verbelen, a Greenpeace forest campaigner working on the Congo Basin
“Fire is quite a regular thing in Africa. It’s part of a cycle, people in the dry season set fire to bush rather than to dense, moist rain forest.”
Angola’s government also urged caution, saying any comparisons to the Amazon may lead to “misinformation."
The fires were fairly usual at the end of the dry season, the Angolan ministry of environment added
“It happens at this time of the year, in many parts of our country, and fires are caused by farmers with the land in its preparation phase, because of the proximity of the rainy season,” it said.
Earlier we reported how Hercules warplanes are now being used to dump thousands of gallons of water onto thousands of wild fires in the Amazon.
The emergency move comes amid mounting fury over the shocking ongoing destruction of the planet's largest tropical rain forest.
Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro ordered the sudden military intervention to combat multiple blazes now raging out of control.
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A video posted by the country's defence ministry later showed a military plane raining water down onto fires below.
Around 44,000 troops are now on alert and some troops are already heading to six Brazilian states that asked for help.
The states affected by the massive blazes are Roraima, Rondonia, Tocantins, Para, Acre and Mato Grosso.
