The fire season in Brazil's Pantanal wetlands has not officially started, but it is already breaking records

SAO PAULO — Brazil's immense Pantanal wetlands have not yet technically entered the annual fire season, but the number of fires has already broken records and led experts to predict this year will be the most devastating since decades.

Typically, the world’s largest tropical wetlands dry out and are prone to fires from July to September. But satellites from the National Institute for Space Research detected more than 2,500 fires in the region in June alone, by far the highest number recorded for that month since 1998. That’s more than six times the number recorded in the same month of 2020, known as the “Year of the Flames,” when wildfires ravaged the region and sparked public outcry.

“We are facing one of the worst situations ever seen in the Pantanal,” Environment Minister Marina Silva told reporters on Monday, adding that the entire Paraguay River basin is experiencing a serious water shortage.

The Pantanal, fed by tributaries of the Paraguay River and located largely in Brazil, is a biodiversity hotspot and a popular destination for tourists wanting to see jaguars, macaws, caimans, capybaras and migratory birds in the wild.

But today, instead of its charming natural scenes, what Brazilians see from the Pantanal are devastating fires that devour flora and scorch animals.

On Friday, Silva visited Corumba, one of the worst-hit towns, with Planning and Budget Minister Simone Tebet, who was born and made her political career in the region. Both described what they went through as a harrowing experience.

“It was a river that snaked like a wall, trying to hold back the fire,” Silva said. “In the middle of so much ashes, there was a tree that bloomed, in gratitude for life. We can’t destroy it.

The environment minister attributed the fires to human activity, climate change and the prolonged effects of El Niño and La Niña phenomena that alter sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

The Brazilian federal government has deployed 285 agents from various agencies as well as 82 members of the National Guard to support local firefighters.

After the record fires of 2020, which ravaged nearly 30% of Brazil's Pantanal, local authorities expanded their firefighting committees to include different branches of government and environmental nonprofits, such as the Fund World for Nature and SOS Pantanal. The committees discuss fire management and monitoring and train local communities in fire prevention and rapid response.

Firefighters are already struggling to contain the fires. Manuel Garcia da Silva, head of a fire brigade, explains that his biggest difficulty is the distance that separates them from the terrain, which ranges from savannah to wetlands.

“Most of the fires in the Pantanal are underground. You don’t see them, but around 10 a.m. they start to resurface,” he told The Associated Press. “They continue to burn underground because of the material that was deposited by the floods in the Pantanal. These fires are very difficult to manage because they burn almost a meter of material below the ground.”

Garcia da Silva said his brigade spent seven hours a day fighting fires, often two days in a row. “As long as we have strength, we continue to fight,” he added.

Conditions in the Pantanal are now more severe than in 2020 – and expectations of extreme drought in August and September are even more alarming.

“This could worsen the fire situation,” said Vinicius Silgueiro, territorial intelligence coordinator at the Mato Grosso State Life Center Institute.

During the rainy season, rivers overflow their banks, flooding the land and making much of it accessible only by boat and plane. This year, the Paraguay River basin has experienced a significant rainfall deficit since the start of the rainy season in October.

In June, all but one of the region's 12-meter-deep rivers showed levels below average for this time of year, according to a June 26 bulletin from the Geological Survey of Brazil. The bureau warned in February that 2024 could be one of the driest years on record in Brazil.

“The current situation is extremely worrying. Due to the prolonged drought and high temperatures, the vegetation is under stress that predisposes it to fires,” said Renata Libonati, a meteorology professor who coordinates the Pantanal fire warning system at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Since January, fires have destroyed more than 688,000 hectares of the Brazilian area of ​​the biome, according to its monitoring system.

According to Libonati, most of the ongoing fires are likely human-caused rather than natural, such as lightning. Earlier this week, Minister Silva said 85% of fires originated on private property.

Traditional farmers in the region use fire to manage and renew grazing areas, although the practice is banned during the dry season. The ban usually takes effect on July 1 each year, but authorities moved the date to early June this year due to dry conditions.

Silva sounded the alarm about the risk of fires in the Pantanal on June 5, during a ceremony for World Environment Day. Environmental organizations working in the region had already warned of this danger well before that date.

“In 2020, it was said that the next four years would be very dry and that water levels in the Pantanal would not rise,” Osvaldo Barassi Gajardo, a conservation specialist at the World Wildlife Fund, said by phone.

A recent study by Brazil’s Institute for Space Research found that dry and semi-arid areas have expanded across the country over the past 30 years. Proportionally, the Pantanal is the Brazilian biome that has become the driest since 1985, according to a study released earlier this week by MapBiomas, a research initiative that maps land use. Over the next few decades, Brazil’s west-central region, where the Pantanal is located, is expected to become warmer while its southern region will become wetter, according to a major climate study commissioned by the Brazilian presidency in 2015.

In May, violent storms and floods killed nearly 200 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in southern Brazil, marking one of the worst climate disasters ever to hit the country, and residents are still struggling to recover.

In the Pantanal, Brazil, many fear that the worst is yet to come. According to official data, the months of July to September are at least 20 times more affected by fires than those of June.

“We have to be very attentive to what could happen in the coming months. It is important to redouble prevention efforts, to try to fight the fire now and to have much more prevention and monitoring actions from the public authorities,” said Gajardo of the World Wildlife Fund.

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Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.

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