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Fires may have affected up to 85 percent of threatened Amazon species

Since 2001, an area up to the size of Washington state has burned

flames and smoke billow from trees in the Amazon

A fire burns trees in the Amazon basin in Brazil’s Maranhão state in 2014. Fires like these are searing the geographic ranges of thousands of Amazonian species, an analysis of nearly 15,000 plant and vertebrate species finds.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

By Jake Buehler

- More than 2 years ago

Much of the Amazon’s biodiversity is under fire — literally.