Brazil's election could determine the fate of the Amazon after record deforestation

TL;DR

Under President Jair Bolsonaro, who is trying to win a second term in Sunday's presidential election, more than 13,000 square miles of jungle have been lost, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research that tracks fires in the Amazon.Bolsonaro, they say, has encouraged more farming, ranching and mining in the Amazon while at the same time slashing the budgets and staff of government agencies tasked with protecting the jungle and stopping deforestation.In recent decades, Brazilian governments at least tried — if not always successfully — to preserve the jungle and rein in deforestation.But Bolsonaro, a former army captain who has ironically referred to himself as "Captain Chainsaw," views the Amazon as a source of jobs and economic growth and has encouraged people to settle there.Most polls show Bolsonaro — a climate-change skeptic who once accused environmental groups of setting fire to the Amazon to embarrass his government — trailing front-runner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by double digits."

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