In the historically largest forest and wildfires in Russia, an area half the size of Germany has been destroyed so far. According to estimates by the environmental organization Greenpeace, more than 17.6 million hectares of forest and steppe have been burned across the country in the past few months. This broke the negative record from 2012 with around 16 million hectares.
[Yakutsk -] Greenpeace claims that it relies on publicly available data from space surveillance and recently complained that these satellite data were no longer available to the continued protection authorities. "The situation is therefore difficult to assess," said Grigori Kuksin from Greenpeace to the German Press Agency in Moscow.
According to the Russian environmental activist, there is no end in sight. Currently there are more frequent fires in fields and in steppe areas in the south. In the forests they have become less, also because the first snow has fallen in some places.
In the summer months, forest and wildfires occur again and again in Russia – also in the taiga forest belt, which is important for the global climate. Most recently, President Vladimir Putin described the extent as unprecedented. [dpa]
