The world’s largest tropical wetland is not supposed to burn.
And yet, Brazil’s Pantanal is on fire.
Thick smoke rises all around the village of Poconé as the wind whips it into little tornadoes. Fire crackles and races through the brush, jumping from forest to pasture to swamp.
The flames have destroyed some 25,000 square kilometres— roughly four times the area that has burned in California in 2020 so far.
A UNESCO heritage site and one of the world’s most diverse ecosystems — home to dozens of endangered species and the densest concentration of jaguars anywhere — is in jeopardy. Charred jaguar carcasses now litter the ground, along with burned alligator-like caimans and fallen birds.
Local ranchers struggle to survive. Traditionally, they use fire to revitalize and clear the land, but not on this scale or under such dry conditions.
“It hasn’t rained in three months, and we don’t know if it will rain in September. I hope so,” said Dorvalino Camargo, fanning himself with a straw hat after helping to beat back the flames. “Cattle are suffering. We are all suffering.”
‘I feel defeated’
Preservationists who have worked most of their lives to protect the area from loggers and poachers now face a new, much deadlier threat.
“We’ve never dealt with fire conditions so big, so severe,” said Angelo Rabelo from his home in the Pantanal. “We’re just not prepared to confront it.”
Rabelo is a former police colonel who came to the region 37 years ago to stop illegal hunting, and stayed to start the environmental organization Instituto Homem Pantaneiro.
“I feel impotent and defeated,” he said. “It’s a deep pain.”
Normally the Pantanal gets abundant moisture from the Amazon rainforest, showers spawned in the vast jungle to the north which feed wetlands throughout the heart of South America, not only in Brazil but also in Bolivia and Paraguay.
But the Amazon itself is struggling with drought along with fire that experts have repeatedly linked to deforestation and human activity. More and more of the Amazon’s wilderness has been taken over by land developers, illegal logging and expanded agriculture.