While much of the world has focused on the fires raging in the Amazon, the world’s largest forest–the Siberian Taiga in Russia–has been on fire for most of 2019.
Since January this year, more than 130,000 square kilometres of land and forest—an area the size of Greece—has been burned in Siberia, which is having detrimental effects on the lives and livelihood of the indigenous peoples who depend on the forest and have traditionally protected it.
Before public pressure by indigenous peoples and others was put on the Russian government in August, understaffed and underequipped firefighters were only able to put out 4% of the fires. Recent snow and rains in late September have put out more, but fires continue in these unique boreal forests and arctic tundra.
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