Written by: Jake Spring, Mircely Guanipa and Maria Ramirez
SAO PAULO/MARCAY, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuela is struggling with a record number of forest fires as drought caused by climate change affects the Amazon rainforest region, according to data released on Monday.
According to Brazil’s Inpe research agency, which monitors all of South America, satellites recorded more than 30,200 fire hotspots in Venezuela from January to March; This is the highest level in that period since records began in 1999.
This includes fires in the Amazon as well as the country’s other forests and grasslands.
Man-made fires, often set to clear land for agriculture, are growing out of control in northern South America due to high temperatures and low rainfall, as well as a lack of prevention planning, researchers say. Scientists blame the drought on climate change and El Niño, a natural warming in the eastern Pacific that disrupts global weather patterns.
The rainy season has brought relief further south in Brazil’s Amazon region in recent months, but the fires in Venezuela could be a worrying sign of what lies ahead when the dry season arrives, said Manoela Machado, a fire researcher at the University of Oxford.
“Everything indicates that we will see other catastrophic fire events, such as megafires that are very large in size and height,” Machado said.
The most intense fires in the region usually occur in August and September in Brazil, on the southeastern coast of the Amazon, where agricultural deforestation is most severe.
Nearly 400 firefighters in Venezuela battled a massive blaze over the Easter holiday weekend that threatened lush Henri Pittier National Park, a coastal preserve with rare cloud forests, according to the national park service.
“This fire shocked me, although it didn’t panic me,” said Carlos Carruido Perez, who lives nearby. “I have never seen a fire of this size and such damage to the environment before.”
Venezuela’s environment ministry said last month it had launched a coordinated effort with helicopters and additional equipment to fight the fires at Henri Pittier.
The ministry said last week that more firefighting efforts were underway along the highway that runs through the park.
There were 5,690 active fires in the Amazon region further south of Venezuela as of the end of March, according to NASA data. This accounts for more than half of the fires burning across the entire Amazon in nine countries.
Fires are engulfing Guayana City, Venezuela’s largest urban center in the Amazon, with smoke, according to a Reuters witness.
Authorities in the nearby town of Uverito evacuated 315 families from their homes due to the fire threat, local media reported. About 360 square kilometers burned in Uverito, an area six times the size of Manhattan, according to Jose Rafael Lozada, a forestry engineer and professor emeritus at Universidad de Los Andes in Merida, Venezuela.
REGIONAL INTERVENTION IS MISSING
The same hot, dry weather fueling fires in Venezuela is also causing fires to spread across the border in Brazil’s Roraima state, threatening indigenous reserves there.
Venezuela and Roraima have seen only 10% to 25% of normal precipitation levels in the past 30 to 90 days, said Michael Coe, director of the tropical program at the US-based Woodwell Climate Research Center.
Lozada said the region is in a vicious cycle where climate change contributes to dry, hot conditions that worsen fires, and those fires release greenhouse gases that further fuel climate change.
Fires do not generally occur naturally in wet rainforests. He said humans set the vast majority of fires to clear forests for farms and ranches, a long-standing practice.
“People burn the same way, but the drought is more severe. The vegetation is drier, the rains are less, and we see the consequences: A small burn turns into a big fire,” Lozada said. he added.
The Amazon drought has wreaked havoc on life in the world’s largest rainforest since last year, plunging river levels to record lows, killing endangered dolphins and disrupting boats carrying food and medicine to dozens of cities.
Oxford’s Machado said that despite a wealth of information tracking fires and pointing to future climate risks, governments in the region have still failed to mount a robust response to prevent and fight fires.
He said governments should ban fires during dry periods, take more rapid targeted action to stop fires before they get out of control, and employ firefighters year-round rather than on a temporary basis.
In Lozada, Venezuela, firefighters and other experts said the government’s response was inadequate.
Venezuela’s information ministry and parks service did not respond to requests for comment.
“The forest is not protected due to the lack of equipment to fight forest fires,” said William Lopez, union leader of the state-owned forestry company Maderas del Orinoco.
“Firefighters have to work miracles to fight fires without equipment.”
(Reporting by Jake Spring in Sao Paulo, Mircely Guanipa in Maracay, Venezuela, Maria Ramirez in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, and Tibisay Romero in Valencia, Venezuela; Additional reporting by Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas in Caracas; Editing by : Bill Berkrot)