Since January, fires have been burning more and more of what many consider the earth’s lungs: The Amazon Rain Forest. According to CNBC; Make it, more than 70,000 fires have occurred since January, that’s up 84 percent since 2018, and the fire season is just getting started.

The Amazon Rain forest is home to over 2,000 species of animals, according to World Atlas. But with the fires burning up this natural habitat, the life in the Amazon is losing their homes. Some of the life in the Amazon can be found nowhere else in the world. They could become endangered, or worse, go extinct. Not only would we lose a number of the world’s wildlife, but the food chain would also be messed up. The Amazon would be less attractive. Brazil will lose a lot of its economy.

In addition, the Amazon is often called “The lungs of the Earth” as 20 percent of oxygen on the planet comes from the Amazon. This is because the Amazon has so many trees. The trees produce oxygen that is essential to our lives, and the forests give us most of those trees.

So here’s a thought: What if instead of stopping the fires in the Amazon we replenish other forests? There are a couple things wrong with that. First off, as I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of diversity in the Amazon and we can’t just kill it off. It would mess up our food chain, Brazil’s economy, and just in general, killing 2,000 species kind of seems absurd. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for planting more trees and replenishing other forests, but it’s not really a priority when the Amazon is on fire.

With the Amazon on fire and climate change speeding up, the situation is pretty bad. We need to save the rain forest, it’s one of our biggest resources and our environment isn’t ready to lose it.