Almost 10% of the Argentine province of Corrientes, some 800,000 hectares, has been devastated by fire. The historical drought that has plagued the province for two years has led to the flames devouring even a fifth of the Esteros del Iberá, the largest wetland in Argentina. Without the natural water barriers that often act as firebreaks in this region, native forests, grasslands, logging and ranch lands burn out of control. The few rains that have fallen in recent hours and the firefighters deployed on the ground are insufficient to stop the many active outbreaks in the province, which has been declared an environmental catastrophe.
“Faced with the tragedy that Corrientes is experiencing, we put all our forces to respond. We send all our firefighters, brigade members, security forces, hydrants and helicopters,” Argentine President Alberto Fernández said on Monday. The fires began in mid-January, but quickly multiplied due to the initial passivity of the provincial authorities.
“At first the fires were normalized. It is normal for Corrientes to see columns of fire because it is a province with a livestock culture where fire is used to recover pastures. But what is atypical is this extreme dryness, because that practice is designed with the wetland, which acts as a barrier to fire, and now that barrier has disappeared. There is only water left in the lagoons,” explains biologist Sofía Heinonen, director of the Rewilding Argentina Foundation, in charge of conservation projects in the Iberá Wetlands.
The porous characteristics of the soil of the Esteros, similar to peat, allow the fire to spread underground and emerge a few meters from where it was extinguished if the thermometers exceed 35 degrees, which makes it so difficult to fight them. The absence of roads within the wetland also prevents the passage of hydrant trucks. “It has to rain, but it will rain a lot. Last night it started to drip, there were downpours, but lightning also struck and set the Esteros on fire more,” adds Heinonen.
So far, nearly 150,000 hectares of the more than 700,000 hectares that this great nature reserve has, divided between a national park, a provincial park and land in private hands, have been burned.
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The authorities estimate that the economic losses already exceed 26,000 million pesos (about 232 million dollars at the official exchange rate) and the Government has announced aid for producers who have seen everything they had disappear in a matter of hours. Tourism, a source of provincial income on the rise in recent years thanks to the natural attraction of the Esteros, has been paused and aggravates the impact caused by the covid-19 pandemic.
Videos of female alligators with young on top walking in search of water and of large extensions of native forests on fire have shocked Argentine society, which has launched numerous solidarity initiatives. The most successful has been that of the influencer Santiago Maratea, who in less than 48 hours managed to raise more than one hundred million pesos (almost a million dollars) that will go to fire-fighting equipment for the province’s firefighters, mostly volunteers.
Specimens of Yacaré with their young move escaping from the fires that ravage the Portal Cambyreta area in Corrientes, they are one of the many species that today are forced to leave their natural environments. On the other hand we also have specimens with serious burns pic.twitter.com/vV98URXzSA
— LuisMartínez Environmentalist (@AMBLUISM) February 17, 2022
“The fauna that has been most affected are small reptiles, snakes and vipers. There are sectors where the fire advanced faster and you find capybaras and alligators that could not escape. But in general, the fire progresses slowly and the animals have escape routes because the reserve is very large”, says the mayor of the Iberá National Park, Daniel Rodano. Of the 190,000 hectares of the park, 60,000 have been affected.
Heinonen agrees that many animals have found refuge in areas of the nature reserve that have not been destroyed by fire so far, but the foundation he directs has had to intervene to save those specimens that had been recently reintroduced, such as scarlet macaws, and they were not yet sufficiently adapted to escape this tragedy.
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