Brazil vice-president challenges DiCaprio to a hike in the jungle
SAO PAULO: Brazilian vice-president Hamilton Mourao challenged actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio Wednesday to an eight-hour hike in the Amazon, saying he wanted to show the Hollywood star the rainforest is not actually burning.
Mourao, who heads President Jair Bolsonaro's task force on fighting deforestation, took issue with DiCaprio reposting an Instagram video from The Guardian newspaper with images of the world's biggest rainforest in flames.
“I'd like to invite our most recent critic, the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, to come with me to Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira ( in northern Brazil) and walk eight hours through the jungle,” Mourao said at an event on sustainable development in the Amazon organised by the National Industrial Confederation (CNI). “He'll get a better understanding of how things work in this immense region.”
DiCaprio, an outspoken environmentalist, shared The Guardian's post on his own Instagram account Friday.
The accompanying caption cited satellite data from Brazil's space agency, INPE, showing the number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon in July increased 28 per cent year-on-year, with early numbers for August also showing an increase.
“Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, is under pressure internationally to curb the fires, but he has publicly doubted the severity of them in the past claiming opponents and indigenous communities were responsible,” said the post.
Bolsonaro has faced international condemnation for presiding over rising deforestation and huge fires in the Amazon last year.