Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service.

We are a weekly guide to the numbers all around us and I'm Tim Halford.

Last week we discussed the fires burning in the Amazon rainforest

and found out that the fires are really a symptom of the more basic problem of deforestation.

So this week we'd like to figure out how much deforestation is taking place.

Brazilian officials have told the BBC that there's been an aggressive increase in deforestation

since the election of President Bolsonaro in January.

An area of Amazon rainforest roughly the size of a football pitch is now being cleared every minute.

One report there from BBC News, but listener Danny Mooney was so skeptical about the deforestation

coverage that he decided to tweet us here at at BBC More or Less.

One football pitch of Brazilian rainforest going every minute.

Can this be correct?

There have been numerous reports by news outlets around the world about the worsening

situation in the Brazilian Amazon. Deforestation is on the increase they say.

But deforestation has been a problem for a very long time.

But the new President, Jair Bolsonaro, has been blamed by some for making things worse.

He's sometimes called the Brazilian Donald Trump, the two men share some stylistic similarities.

Here's Anthony Pereira, director of the Brazil Institute at Kings College London.

The new President, Jair Bolsonaro, who came in in January 2019, he has a very different

take on the environment from most of the other presidents.

It's really going back to, I would say, to the 1980s, the government of José Sarnay from 85 to 90.

And he said the Amazon is ours.

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