This August, the Brazilian Amazon rainforest recorded more fires than any other month in nearly five years due to a surge in illegal logging, AP reported.

According to Brazil's national space institute, satellite sensors recorded 33,116 fires. August and September are usually the worst months for both deforestation and fires.

Fires in the Amazon are almost always deliberately lit, mostly to improve pasture for livestock or to burn newly cut trees after they have dried out. Often fires get out of control and spread to untouched areas of the forest.

About 20% of the area burned in the Amazon this year was cut down recently. Some of them are within protected areas that are targets for land grabbing, according to an analysis by the Brazilian nonprofit Center of Life Institute, based on NASA's database of global fire emissions.

One example is Cristalino II State Park in the state of Mato Grosso, a protected area recently declared illegal by a state court. The state's attorney's office appealed the decision, but the legal repeal appears to have licensed the lumberjacks, unleashing a wave of destruction. In the past few weeks alone, the fire has destroyed almost 40 square kilometers in the park, despite the presence of firefighters, according to the Center for Life Institute.

Widespread fires mean that Brazil is unable to limit its greenhouse gas emissions, as nearly half of the country's carbon pollution comes from land conversion. The Amazon rainforest is an important carbon sink for the planet, but burning wood releases that carbon into the atmosphere.