Fire and deforestation scar the Iriri national forest reserve near Novo Progresso in the Brazilian Amazon. ‘This story that the Amazon is going up in flames is a lie,’ according to President Jair Bolsonaro. Photograph: Lucas Landau/The Guardian

by Lucas Landau in Novo Progresso and Tom Phillips

Jair Bolsonaro smiles down from a propaganda billboard at the entrance to this scruffy Amazon outpost, welcoming travelers to his “route to development”.

But 20 months into Bolsonaro’s presidency – and a year after a devastating outbreak of Amazon fires caused global outrage – the fires are back, and many fear Brazil’s leader is instead steering his country towards environmental ruin.

During a two-hour monitoring flight through the skies around Novo Progresso the Guardian saw giant columns of white and grey smoke rising from supposedly protected forests below.

Elsewhere, illegal goldmines could be seen within the Baú indigenous territory – a chaotic tapestry of muddy pools and makeshift encampments where pristine forest once stood. Newly deforested areas of fallen and charred trees were visible within the Iriri forest reserve.

“The Amazon is condemned to destruction,” despaired one former top official at Brazil’s enfeebled environmental agency, Ibama, accusing the far-right populist of overseeing a wholesale “demolition” of protection efforts.

“Under this government there will be no combating [of rainforest destruction],” the ex-official said. “The future looks dark.”[…]

Continue reading: Amazon tragedy repeats itself as Brazil rainforest goes up in smoke