Fires ravage Patanal, world’ largest wetland Brazil reinforces that it will keep fighting deforestation

Flames threaten region’s biodiversity, pumas and jaguars

Pocone, Brazil, Aug. 30: The world’s largest wetland is ablaze, but the fire is often invisible.

In Brazil’s Pantanal, the vegetation compacted under the marshy flood water during the wet season dries out as ponds and lagoons evaporate, leaving flammable deposits underground that can continue to smolder long after visible flames die down.

Firefighters across Brazil are battling raging towers of flames from the Amazon rainforest to the Cerrado savannah, but the fires beneath their feet are a particular challenge in the Pantanal. The only way to combat an underground fires is to dig a trench around it, said state firefighter Lieutenant Isaac Wihby.

“But how do you do that if you have a line of fire that’s 20 kilometers long? It’s not viable,” he said.

The fires here are the worst in 15 years. The flames threaten the region’s biodiversity, rich with tapirs, pumas, capybaras and the world’s most dense population of jaguars.

The Pantanal, whose name derives from the Portuguese word for “swamp,” sprawls over more than 1,50,000 sq km in Brazil and also extends into Bolivia and Paraguay.

As fires approached emergency workers in the Pantanal this week, they used tractors to cut through desiccated trees and shrubs, leaving a gash of brown dirt meant to rob the flames of fuel and stop their spread.

But strong winds can send the flames over the top, or underground fires can pass below.

“Sometimes it passes under a firebreak and takes the firefighters by surprise,” said Lieutenant Jean Oliveira, who is leading the firefighting efforts.

“Sometimes you control a fire and it’s not really dead, it’s just sleeping,” he said. Hundreds of firefighters, environmental workers, park rangers and soldiers have worked

Brasilia/Poconé, 30:

Aug. In a dramatic u-turn, Brazil’s Environment Ministry said on Friday it would continue to fight deforestation, reversing its position after saying hours earlier that it could not afford to continue enforcement efforts in the Amazon.

The ministry, through its enforcement arm Ibama and its parks service ICMBio, plays a vital role in combating deforestation with teams deployed on frequently dangerous missions to catch illegal loggers and miners in the world's largest rainforest.

So the original announcement on Friday afternoon that it would cease all operations from Monday came as a shock,

24 hours a day for weeks attempting to extinguish flames that have destroyed thousands of square kilometers of the Pantanal.

With temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), one fire this week was unstoppable as strong winds pushed it across multiple firebreaks, burning through twisted branches and dry leaves through the day and into the night.

“We controlled it but then it jumped there, jumped there, jumped there,” said Edmilson Rodrigo da Silva, a firefighter for Brazil’s centerwest state of Mato Grosso, pointing far into the distance to where the fire had gotten past firebreaks.

The region is a vast flood plain that normally fills with water during the rainy season, roughly from November to March. But the floods were lower than normal this year and a subsequent drought has left the area dangerously susceptible to fire.

— especially amid rising deforestation and growing criticism of Brazil's environmental policy from environmental groups as well as international investors. Last year an area about the size of Lebanon was cleared in the Amazon.

The ministry decision by Federal Budget cited a Brazil’s Secretariat (SOF), to block certain funds that had been allocated to Ibama and ICMBio. The ministry said the SOF'’s move ultimately was ordered by the office of the chief of staff for right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro.

But vice president Hamilton Mourão, who Bolsonaro has put in charge of Brazil’s Amazon response, quickly denied the funds had been pulled. He accused Environment Minister Ricardo Salles of “jumping the gun.”

“The minister jumped the gun, and that’s not going to happen,” he told journalists in Brasilia. “There will not be a blockage of 60 million reais ($11.1 million) dedicated to Ibama and ICMBio.” —

THE MINISTRY, through its enforcement arm Ibama and its parks service ICMBio, plays a vital role in combating deforestation with teams deployed on frequently dangerous missions to catch illegal loggers and miners in the world’s largest rainforest.