“I don’t think you’ll ever get it back to what it was, but you can certainly improve it,” he said. The forests are a critical part of the region’s water cycle; moisture put into the air by trees is responsible for as much as 35 percent of the region’s rainfall, according to some estimates. But put some water in there, and it will change.”Any changes may be long in coming and will face political opposition. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has overseen skyrocketing deforestation in the Amazon. The government, under increasing pressure, has recently announced plans to counter the trend, but spikes in deforestation have continued.

Source: New York Times July 14, 2021 15:22 UTC