Here is a lovely way to measure good news. In the first six months of this year, an area of the Amazon bigger than Singapore, around 795 square kilometres of living rainforest, is still standing that would have fallen at last year's pace. Brazil's space agency, which watches over the forest by satellite, reports a 38 per cent improvement on last year, the rainforest's gentlest first half year in a decade. Those trees were saved on purpose: enforcement agencies were rebuilt, satellite monitoring was sharpened, and the forest was made a national priority again.
"This shows that the political will to fight deforestation has prevailed," said Ane Alencar, science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. Her deeper point is the hopeful one: the fate of a forest is a choice, and choices can change. Rangers are readying for a hot dry summer ahead, so the vigilance continues. But every one of those saved hectares is breathing this morning, sheltering macaws and monkeys and a thousand species without names yet, because people decided it should be so. May every half year report read like this one.
Our short take: the full story is by Mongabay, reporting figures from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. Photograph: the Amazon by Neil Palmer, CIAT, via Wikimedia Commons.