Brazil Says Fires Reduced in Amazon Jungle
9/9/99
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Title: Brazil Says Fires Reduced in Amazon Jungle
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 9, 1999
BRASILIA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Brazil's government said on Thursday a
campaign to combat fires in the Amazon rain forest has reduced hot
spots in that vast region, but the number of danger zones has risen
elsewhere in the country.
Brazil came under attack at the beginning of this month from
environmentalists accusing the government of doing too little to
prevent fires in the west-central states of Mato Grosso and Mato
Grosso do Sul.
"We have an ocean of problems and difficulties, our resources are but
a drop in the ocean," Environment Minister Jose Sarney told
journalists on Thursday.
Hot spots -- areas where there is a high probability that a fire is
burning -- have fallen across the country, to 30,213 in August,
compared with 33,229 in the same month a year ago, according to the
government's Environment Agency (Ibama).
Sarney said the drop in the overall figure largely was due to a
programme involving 2,000 people from local governments, the army and
firefighters across the most vulnerable part of the Amazon,
stretching from the western state of Acre to the Atlantic coast.
That has reduced fires in the states of Acre, Amazonas, Maranhao,
Para and Tocantins, but at the same time the number of fires in other
parts of the country has risen.
The fires are set between July and October by farmers who burn their
land to prepare the soil for planting.
The minister said 95 percent of fires are on private land.
At the end of last month, a fire-induced haze disrupted air traffic
and triggered a rise in respiratory infections in Mato Grosso.