Brazil Fears Widespread Fires in Amazon Rainforest
3/28/98
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Title: Brazil Fears Widespread Fires in Amazon Rainforest
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 3/28/98
Byline: Joelle Diderich
BRASILIA, March 28 (Reuters) - Brazil is formulating an emergency program to
tackle forest fires amid fears the flames ravaging the northern Amazon could
soon tear across the rest of the rainforest, according to a published report on
Saturday. Fires set by subsistence farmers have burned out of control since
January in savannah near Brazil's border with Venezuela. The flames are now
pressing into jungle that is dry from a drought blamed on the El Nino weather
phenomenon.
The Environment Ministry and the Group of Seven (G7) major industrial nations,
which is funding a pilot program for sustainable development in the Amazon,
were discussing how to prevent a similar situation a few months from now, daily
newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo said.
``The Amazonian affairs secretariat and international specialists think that
the situation could be repeated in central Amazonia with the start of the dry
season, in May and June,'' Luiz Carlos Joels, executive secretary of the G7
program, told Folha.
``The pilot program is proposing an emergency project to make sure that, if
there is fire, the catastrophic situation in Roraima is not repeated,'' he was
quoted as saying. While the northern state of Roraima is in the last throes of
its dry season, winter is just beginning in other Amazonian states south of the
equator, and scientists fear a repeat of the tragedy.
``Climate forecasts suggest less rainfall, more drought and therefore more
fires in the Amazon region this year,'' the Commission for the Creation of the
Yanomami Reservation (CCPY) said in a report.
``This is not a one-off situation, but a pattern that will be continued.
Therefore not only emergency help is needed, but long-term solutions,'' the
CCPY said.
A team of specialists from the U.N. Environment Program was scheduled to
arrive on Sunday to help assess the extent of the damage, more than four
months after the U.N.'s initial offer to send a delegation.
Brazil only accepted the offer this week, upsetting its armed forces, which
view the Amazon as a national security issue and are sensitive to the prospect
of outside interference in the remote, Western Europe-sized rainforest.
The U.N. group, led by experts from Switzerland, Mexico and Kenya, will meet
with government officials on Monday before heading to Roraima later in the
week, said a spokeswoman for the U.N. office in Brazil.
More than 1,300 firefighters were combating the fires in Roraima on Saturday,
including 107 inside the jungle reservation of the primitive Yanomami Indians,
the state government said.
Fires were now under control in the region of Apiau, an area 75 miles (120
km) from the state capital, Boa Vista, which has been the worst hit by the
blaze. But more fires were appearing in the south, the state government said.
The fire also invaded the island ecological station of Maraca, which contains
examples of every plant and animal species in the region, a researcher there
told Reuters.
``Everything is black with smoke here. Many trees are dying. All the
undergrowth is dead,'' Rossano Mendes said by telephone. ``It will be a
terrible loss for humanity if something happens to the station.''
Rumors were swirling that small farmers were setting new fires purposely to
take advantage of a government amnesty for small growers unable to repay their
loans.
``People are talking about it but we have received no evidence so far,'' a
spokesman for the state government said. ``If anyone is caught in flagrante
setting a fire, they will be jailed.''
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