Deforestation in the Amazon rain forest last year was the second-worst on record.
Satellite photos and data showed that ranchers, soybean farmers and loggers burned and cut down a near-record area of 10,088 square miles of rain forest in the 12 months ending in August 2004, the Brazilian Environmental Ministry said.
The destruction was nearly 6 per cent higher than in the same period the year before, when 9,500 square miles were destroyed.
The deforestation hit record numbers in 1995, when the Amazon shrank a record 11,200 square miles, an area roughly the size of Belgium or the American state of Massachusetts.
The Amazon forest - which sprawls over 1.6 million square miles and covers more than half the country - is a key component of the global environment. The jungle is sometimes called the world's "lung" because its billions of trees produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Environmentalists were shocked with the new figures, which were announced nearly a year after the Brazilian government announced a $140 million package to curtail destruction.
Government officials were expecting an increase in destruction of only about 2 per cent.
Brazil's rain forest is as big as western Europe and covers 60 per cent of the country's territory. Experts say as much as 20 per cent of its 1.6 million square miles has already been destroyed by development, logging and farming.
AP