Cartoons help Bolivian farmers dampen fire risk

Amix of high-tech satellite data and brightly coloured cartoons is helping subsistence farmers around Riberalta in Bolivia’s northern Amazon pick the best time to burn off their land and reduce the risk of uncontrolled blazes, as persistent drought makes wildfires a hot issue in Latin America. “Fire is a real problem with these communities — it’s something they’re concerned about,” said Veronica Ibarnegaray, programme director at Bolivia’s Fundacion Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN — Friends of Nature Foundation), explaining that slash-andburn farming for crops and cattle is largely to blame.

To let indigenous farmers know whether hot, dry or windy conditions could fan their fires out of control, threatening livelihoods and ecologically sensitive areas, fire monitors check local conditions with hand-held weather meters before adjusting colour-coded signs showing the risk level, she said.

The foundation, which has developed its own early warning system combining NASA satellite and weather data, distributes burning calendars and pamphlets illustrated with cartoons showing farmers what precautions they should take to keep fires under control.

It is also training local communities to become first-response fire fighters after running a similar project in Bolivia’s eastern Chiquitania region.

Following a spate of recent fires in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina, alongside deadly blazes in Chile, experts are calling for a greater focus on fire education and alerting systems to limit wildfires, which are widely expected to increase as pressure grows on land and climate change brings warmer conditions.

“When the fire weather is so bad and the fuels are so dry, nobody can put them out,” said Amber Soja, a NASA scientist who works with Conservation International on fire detection and risk forecasting.

In drought-hit Peru, thousands of hectares of land were scorched in fires late last year, including forests, farmland and protected areas known for their biodiversity and rare animals, while fires have also flared in Bolivia which has suffered its worst drought in 25 years.

Tinderbox conditions caused by a neardecade long drought, high temperatures and strong winds led to the fires that recently ripped through Chile, killing 11 people, destroying 1,500 homes and costing the government $333 million in damages and the forestry industry around $350 million.

“The fires here are all caused directly or indirectly by man, so the first job we need to do is environmental education,” said Roberto Garfias Salinas, forestry engineer at the University of Chile.

Experts say Chile requires increased resources to tackle blazes, combined with comprehensive fire education and tighter measures to control arson, blamed for starting some blazes.

In Peru and Bolivia, where farmers use fire as a cheap way to clear land and remove plagues of insects and snakes, experts say better coordination, faster reaction times and wider use of early warning systems could help prevent blazes spiralling out of control.

“A lot of the time, fire is used for agricultural management — burning resets everything and can enrich soil too,” said Karyn Tabor, early warning systems director at Conservation International which provided fire risk data to Bolivia’s FAN before it developed its own model.

But those using the method need to be knowledgeable about how to do so, “and that’s a huge issue”, she said.