Brazil has fired the head of a government agency that found a steep rise in deforestation in the Amazon, following a public spat with President Jair Bolsonaro, CNN reports.
Ricardo Galvão, the director of Brazil's National Space and Research Institute (INPE), said he was terminated on Friday after defending satellite data that showed deforestation was 88% higher in June compared to a year ago.
Galvão said in a video statement on Facebook that the agency let him go after a meeting with Brazil's Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications, Marcos Pontes.
He added that the scientific institute would continue to operate and it would now be up to Pontes to decide on his successor. An advisor to Pontes confirmed Galvão's comments to state news agency Agencia Brasil.
Bolsonaro called the INPE's findings "lies" and said they were harmful for trade negotiations, according to Agencia Brasil.
But Galvão stood firm, reaffirming the validity of his scientific institute, which has been monitoring the country's forests since the 1970s. He said the president had made "inappropriate accusations [of] people of the highest level of Brazilian science," in an interview with newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.