Fires in the Amazon rainforest don’t start themselves, but that doesn’t mean they are unusual. Every year in the dry season, roughly between August and October, deforestation fires are set by people who clear land for a variety of reasons — farming, ranching, mining, illicit activities, infrastructure. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which tracks fires in the Amazon, reports that the number of fires detected through September 2019 is up nearly 50 percent from the same period in 2018. (The number updates daily.) That said, the first nine months of 2019 have also seen roughly 10 percent fewer fires than the same period in 2017. Nevertheless, 2019 has seen just over 10,000 more fires than the Brazilian Amazon has seen on average over the past decade. This is why we must send firefighters and firefighting equipment to assist the people working to stop the fires, and the people who set them. Large, fast-moving animals like jaguars and pumas may be able to escape the fires, as may some birds. But slow-moving animals like sloths and anteaters, as well as smaller creatures like frogs and lizards, may die, unable to move out of the fire's path quickly enough to flee.