ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Rains Ward Off Danger of New Fires in Amazon

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 5 1999 (IPS) - Frequent rains that have been falling in the extreme northern Amazon state of Roraima in Brazil, caused by the ‘La Nina’ weather phenomenon, should prevent a repeat of the fires that destroyed around 13,000 square kms of forest last year.

Reinaldo Imbrozio Barbosa, an expert with the National Institute of Research of the Amazonia (INPA), said that optimistic forecast was based on the rains that have fallen frequently over the past few weeks, keeping the humidity level at 70 to 80 percent.

That level of humidity is indispensable for preventing fires that rage out of control, a threat that looms even greater this year due to the huge quantity of dead vegetation and dry, inflammable material left by the disaster of February and March 1998.

The first quarter of the year is usually the driest period in Roraima, when farmers use a slash-and-burn technique to clear land for planting.

If humidity in the air drops below 70 percent and more than 15 days go by without rainfall, the fires set by farmers can easily flash out of control, fuelled by the semi-burnt wood laying around on the ground.

But that is improbable this year, as the rains have been heavier than usual this season, said Barbosa. La Nina, said to follow El Nino, which brought drought to the region, is causing heavy rain in Sao Paulo as well, besides having delayed the usual (southern hemisphere) summer heat in south-central Brazil.

Since early last month, the Institute of Environmental Research of the Amazonia (IPAM), a non-governmental organisation based in Belem, the capital of the Amazon state of Para, has been warning of the risk of a repeat of the fires that destroyed around 13,000 square kms of forests last year.

Two weeks without rain can be fatal, according to Adriana Moreira, president of IPAM, which has 18 researchers dedicated to the basic ecology of the Amazon jungle, and cooperates with the Federal University of Para.

Besides providing inflammable material, the bare trunks of the dead trees no longer offer protective shade for the new vegetation, which can thus dry quickly if it does not rain, Moreira warned.

The threat is constant, because the population refuses to give up the slash-and-burn technique, despite the lessons of the past. More than 20 isolated fires were reported to environmental authorities in February, said the biologist.

Roraima is a sparsely populated state on the border with Venezuela and Guyana. A large part of it is reserved for indigenous groups like the Yanomami, who live in Brazil and Venezuela.

Although an Amazon state, Roraima has extensive areas of savannah, where farming activities are concentrated. That is where last year’s fires started, later spreading to the forests, and to Yanomami lands.

The prolonged drought attributed to the El Nino weather phenomenon, which heats up the waters of the Pacific, created the conditions for the catastrophe, which led to protests around the world and put Brazil back in the dock for its environmental practices.

The fire fighters brought in from all over Brazil as well as neighbouring Argentina and Venezuela were unable to contain the flames, which were only put out by the rains that finally arrived in April.

The 13,100 square kms of primary forest cover destroyed was equivalent to two-thirds of the territory of the Central American country of El Salvador, said Barbosa, who monitors the damages by direct observation from small airplanes.

The National Institute of Spatial Research (INPE), which does its own monitoring through satellite images, estimated the damaged area at 11,700 square kms. A consensus between the measurements of the two government agencies will be sought next month.

Moreira stressed that the thousands of kms of forest destroyed by fires were not included in INPE’s calculation of 16,838 square kms of Amazon jungle deforested last year. In other words, the total surface area of jungle lost was actually nearly double the officially admitted losses, which nonetheless represented a 27 percent increase compared to 1997.

Official data indicate that over the past 20 years, the Amazon region has lost 532,000 square kims of jungle, equivalent to the entire territory of France.

But that estimate can be doubled if areas where “forests have been altered by human action, making them vulnerable to fires” and other forms of destruction, are added in, said Moreira.