Fires in Brazil’s Pantanal Push Wetlands Community to Limit

AFP/APP

Brazil: A riverside community in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands narrowly escaped raging wildfires last month, but some say the record-setting blazes — still burning nearby — are compounding threats to their way of life.

“The river was the only thing separating us from the flames. On the other side, the fire devastated everything,” said Virginia Paes, a local leader in the Baia Negra Environmental Protection Area (APA), where 28 families live.

Four years ago, similar fires blazed through the 5,400-hectare (13,300-acre) preserve along the Paraguay River, in southwest Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state.

“We were just trying to recover from the 2020 fire, which devastated our Pantanal. We had not fully recovered and now we are facing this again,” Paes, a volunteer firefighter and president of the APA’s Association of Women Producers, told AFP.

Though homes and lives were spared, the 53-year-old said, dense smoke from the fires made breathing and daily routines difficult.

This year’s fires set January-June records in the Pantanal, a massive area of tropical wetlands that is home to millions of caimans, parrots, giant otters and the world’s highest density of jaguars.

The Baia Negra APA, just outside the border city of Corumba and neighboring Ladario, is the first created in the biodiversity-rich Pantanal allowing for sustainable resource exploitation.

The population there lives off fishing, craft-making, and a robust eco-tourism industry, among other jobs.