Mourão and Salles share a video with an animal from the Atlantic Forest to counter criticism of burning in the Amazon | Politics

The one minute and 38 second video, with narration in English and subtitles in Portuguese, was produced by the Pará Breeders Association (AcriPará), which brings together cattle ranchers in the state.

On Thursday (10), asked by journalists about the video, Mourão replied that “this is an Amazon-Mata Atlântica integration.” The president of AcriPará admitted that the use of the golden lion tamarin in the video was a “mistake” (read below).

Data published by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) indicate that, in August, the Amazon had 29,307 fire records.

There was a decrease of around 5.2% compared to August 2019, when 30.9 thousand hot spots were registered. The number, however, is 12.4% higher than the historical average registered for the month, which is 26,082 outbreaks, and the second highest registered since 2010.

Piece denies fires in the Amazon

The video says that the Amazon does not burn again and that 5% of farmers in the region use burning to clear land used in food production.

The piece says that fire is used mainly by indigenous communities and small producers. Therefore, the fires would be “cultural” of “small proportion”.

The video was published on Wednesday (9) by Salles and Mourão. The minister wrote in the post: “I received this video, ‘Amazon does not burn.’

Mourão, who heads the National Council for the Legal Amazon, published, along with the video, that Brazil is the country that best conserves its forests.

“Whose side are you on? Who do you really conserve or who manipulates your feelings? Brazil is the country that most conserves its native forests in the world. That is the truth. We take care!”, Mourão wrote.

According to Mourão, the AcriPará video is a “counterpropaganda” action, a response to groups that criticize the environmental policy of the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.

“In the same way that I said, those groups that consider that we are not dealing adequately with the Amazon issue do their propaganda work. We have to do the counter advertising. This is part of the deal, ”said the vice president.

Regarding the fight against fires, given that the government has been developing Operation Green Brazil 2 in the region since May, Mourão said that he preferred to analyze the result of the government’s actions at the end of 2020.

“I prefer to wait until the end of the year, when the operation is finished, this first part of the operation, we do an evaluation and then we have a more coherent result to make known that something that does not go daily,” he said.

The president of the Pará Breeders Association (AcriPará), Maurício Fraga Filho, affirmed that the use of the golden lion tamarin in the video was a “blunder.” According to him, a stock image of the producer who made the material was used.

The video, Fraga said, was the creation of two AcriPará associates who wanted to respond to another video that circulated on social networks and that, according to him, “denigrates the image of the Amazon producer.”