Fires in the Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, jumped 350 percent this year compared to the 2009 total, according to a study by INPE, the national space research institute, released Oct. 8. So far this year there have been 57,700 fires. The Cerrado is Brazil's second largest biome, after the Amazon. Its original two million square kilometers have lost 48 percent of their native vegetation, according to the Environment Ministry.

“The fires are set in order to renew the pastures and 'clean' the land. To fight them we need to know if the cause is ignorance or wrongdoing,” José Felipe Ribeiro, an expert with Embrapa, the Brazilian government's agricultural research agency, told Tierramérica.

In addition to destroying biodiversity, the burning emits greenhouse-effect gases. From 2002 to 2008, the average emissions from the Cerrado were 232 million tons of carbon dioxide.