The fire season has started early in the Brazilian Pantanal, amid concerns the biome might see another catastrophic fire season like in 2020.
The sky around the Brazilian city of Corumbá turned a blistering orange in late June as wildfires raged in the surrounding Pantanal. Intense fires have been burning early in this part of the world’s largest tropical wetlands this year, engulfing communities in smoke and leaving a trail of charred animal carcasses.
“Except that this year, the Paraguay River didn’t fill up, so we didn’t have a flood pulse in the Pantanal and we’re going through this now. Fires have taken on huge proportions since late May,” Porfirio told Mongabay by phone.compared with last year. In the first 23 days of June alone, INPE recorded 2,363 fire hotspots, by far a record for the month before it’s even over .
“We used to have a Pantanal that would burn around the edges, in areas that were truly drier, because it was a more humid environment,” said Eduardo Rosa, coordinator of Pantanal mapping for MapBiomas,tracking deforestation, fires and land-use change. “But in recent years, since 2018, we have a Pantanal that is catching fire around the Paraguay River” in areas not adapted to flames, he added.
At the state level, both Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul have approved such legislation in the last two years. Mato Grosso do Sul’s Pantanal Law, which came into force in February, bans new plantations of exotic species like sugarcane, soy and eucalyptus, and establishes limits for the clearing of forest and Cerrado vegetation on rural properties.