00:42 Amazon Wildfires Outpaced by Cerrado Infernos South America’s largest savanna is burning at an astonishing rate.

At a Glance More than 8,000 fires have been reported in the large savanna this month.

The Cerrado is one of the world's 36 biodiversity hotspots.

The Cerrado has seen 35,547 fire outbreaks since Jan. 1.

The Amazon rainforest gets most of the attention, but Brazil is home to another important biodiversity hotspot endangered by many of the same threats.

The Cerrado, the largest savanna region in South America and the largest hotspot in the Western Hemisphere, covers nearly 800,000 square miles. There are currently 36 recognized biodiversity hotspots in the world.

Fires are now more numerous in the Cerrado than in the Amazon rainforest, data published Wednesday by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research show.

The government's monitoring agency reported 8,012 fires in the Cerrado region and 7,457 fires in the Amazon region in the first 10 days of September, according to the Associated Press.

Farmers use fire to clear land for crops and cattle this time of year. Temperatures in the Cerrado, which is usually hot and dry, have risen unusually high in the last few days, AP reported.

(MORE: Five Things to Know About Fire in the Amazon)

Since Jan. 1, the Cerrado has seen 35,547 fire outbreaks , the online news portal G1 reports, up from 24,625 during the same period in 2018.

The number of outbreaks is slightly less than the annual average for the first nine months of the year, which is 35,627.

The Cerrado contains 12,000 species of plants, about half of which can't be found anywhere else. The region is also home to 250 species of mammals, including endangered maned wolves, jaguars, giant anteaters, giant armadillos and marsh deer.

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/cerrado.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273" srcset="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/cerrado.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273 400w, https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/cerrado.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551 800w" > Native cerrado, or savanna, surrounds an agriculture field in Formosa do Rio Preto, in Brazil's western Bahia state. (Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images)

At least 339 species of animals in the Cerrado are threatened with extinction , according to the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund.

Less than 20 percent of the Cerrado's original area remains undisturbed , according to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and only 13% of the region is under some type of conservation protection. By comparison, almost half of the Amazon is protected.

The Cerrado has become an important part of Brazil's agricultural expansion. About 48 percent of the country's soybeans grow there.

One study found that when land is cleared for agricultural uses, there's little chance it could ever return to its natural state without costly human intervention.

"We discovered that the ground layer, which contains most endemic species, doesn't regenerate once it's been destroyed. Therefore, when pasture is simply abandoned, after a time, it becomes cerradão, high-canopy closed forest with poor biodiversity ," Brazilian researcher Gisela Durigan, from the São Paulo State University said in a news release about the study.

"Neither in Africa nor in Australia has there been a process similar to the one we're experiencing here, with savanna being converted into extensive pasture and large plantations of soybeans, sugarcane or corn," Durigan said.

"In Africa, the savannas are very degraded, but this is due to overgrazing, firewood extraction and other activities with less visible impacts in the short run. In Brazil, we're seeing changes that occur overnight."