Brazil’s Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the world, is under serious threat with fires ravaging, approaching the region’s main highway. “It is extremely difficult to combat, control and combat again a fire with the dimensions that we have seen here in the Pantanal,” said Paulo Barroso, president of the local firefighting committee. Speaking on a visit to Mato Grosso State to see the fire-fighting efforts in the Pantanal, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said the challenges loom large.
“The atmosphere is very hot, very dry, with strong winds and high temperatures,” Salles said. “We saw hundreds of fires along the journey throughout the day. Places where the planes and firemen have fought the fires directly without stopping, but still the fires are causing great damage to fauna, flora and to the Pantanal region,” he added.
Fires could approach the all-time record for any month since records began in 1998. Roughly 8,500 square kilometres, or nearly 6% of the Pantanal, has already burned in January to July, according to government data. Brazil’s national space research agency Inpe has registered 3,121 fires in the first 15 days of August, nearly five times higher than the same period a year ago.
The Pantanal is 10 times the size of the Everglades wetlands in the U.S. state of Florida. The region is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet with more than 4,700 plant and animal species, including threatened ones like the jaguar, according to advocacy group WWF. The region has been suffering from below-average rainfall and higher-than-average temperatures in the past 30 days.
The blazes of fire in the Pantanal come amid rising concerns about fires in the Amazon, it’s much larger neighbour to the north. Fires spiked in the first few days of August in the Amazon, but were down by 17% for Aug. 1-15, compared with the same period a year ago.
