***********************************************
WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Fires
Rage in Brazil
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Forest
Networking a Project of forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest
Conservation Archives
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
9/2/99
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY by EE
The
times they are a changing (ecologically in particular)...
g.b.
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TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Fires rage in Brazil amid drought,
land-clearing operations
Source: Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for
permission to reprint
Date: September 2, 1999
RIO DE
JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- From the Amazon to the
Atlantic,
in the mountains of Rio and the Pantanal wetlands,
Brazil
is burning.
Months
of little or no rain have left most of the country
tinder-dry,
and fires -- often deliberately set -- are raging
out of
control in forests and national parks across Latin
America's
largest country.
Satellite
images identified more than 31,000 fires in 15
states
last month, according to Brazil's Environmental
Protection
Agency, Ibama. Because the NOAA satellites can't
"see"
through clouds or thick smoke, the total almost surely
was
higher. And September looks even worse.
"Everything
is at risk," Silvio Sa, of Ibama's Forest Fire
Prevention
and Combat unit said on Thursday. "There appears to
be a
lot more fires than last year."
August
and September are the burning season in Brazil, when
farmers
and ranchers set fire to brush to clear land for
planting
or pasture.
As
usual, the burning is worst along the southern rim of the
Amazon
jungle, a three-state strip known as the "arc of
deforestation."
What's different this year is the desert-like
dryness
and wildfires have spread to southeastern Brazil.
"The
humidity in Sao Paulo is under 20 percent. That's very
unusual,"
said Carlos Nobre, head of the Weather Forecasting
and
Climate Studies division of Brazil's Space Research
Institute
in Sao Jose dos Campos. "And there is no rain in
sight."
Nearly
half the fires detected by satellites were in the huge
midwestern
state of Mato Grosso, which contains both Amazon
rain
forest and the Pantanal, the world's largest wetlands.
In the
state capital of Cuiaba, 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers)
northwest
of Rio, temperatures this week hit 111 F (44 C).
Clouds
of red dust mixed with smoke covered the city.
Hospitals
reported a sharp increase in respiratory ailments.
Television
footage showed schoolchildren wearing surgical
masks
and a banner saying in Portuguese: "We Want to Breathe."
The
rest of Brazil smoldered, too.
Near
the mountain resort of Petropolis, near Rio, scores of
firefighters
battled a blaze in the Serra dos Orgaos National
Park.
By Wednesday the blaze had destroyed 175 acres (70
hectares)
of parkland, including pristine tracts of Atlantic
forest.
In the
southern state of Parana, fire ravaged more than
125,000
acres of the Ilha Grande National Park on its border
with
Mato Grosso do Sul.
Ibama
has coordinated firefighting efforts, shipping equipment
and
enlisting the help of the army, navy and various police
forces.
The U.S. government provided a plane equipped with
NASA-designed
sensors and digital cameras, capable of mapping
the
spread of fires through the smoke cover and relaying the
information
to firefighters.
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