TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Joshua HOWAT BERGER / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / RIOTERRA" - NO MARKETING - NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS
Handout picture released by Rioterra environmental research group showing an aerial view of part of the 95,000-hectare Rio Preto-Jacunda State Nature Reserve, in Rondonia State, Brazil, after it was burned down, on September 6, 2023. On September 3, 2023, a project launched in 2019 by Rioterra that replanted hundreds of thousands of trees in an illegally deforested nature reserve in Brazil went up in flames, in what investigators suspect was arson. The area is so remote that Rioterra staff only arrived there on September 6, a day after satellite images alerted them to the destruction. The reforestation project took 270 hectares (665 acres) of forest that had been razed by cattle ranching on a protected nature reserve in the northern state of Rondonia and replanted it with 360,000 trees. The project cost nearly $1 million, and directly employed more than 100 people, according to Rioterra. (Photo by RIOTERRA / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / RIOTERRA" - NO MARKETING - NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS