National Park and hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland burned by wildfires in Argentina: ‘We can’t handle it’ | Abroad

The fire brigade, with police and volunteers, is working to combat the fires that have already affected more than six percent of the land in the northeastern province of Corrientes. The area has been dealing with drought and high temperatures since the end of last year: it is currently summer in Argentina.

However, the fire brigade is not adequately equipped to put out many fires. “More than 600,000 hectares have already been burned, and our teams can’t handle it. We have seaplanes and helicopters, but we just can’t handle it,” District Fire Chief Daniel Bertorello said in a phone interview with Reuters news agency.

Ibera National Park, one of the largest freshwater wetlands in the world, has also been devastated by the fires. Rare and endangered species that inhabit the park, such as swamp deer, crocodiles and more than 380 species of birds, are threatened by fire. The pictures show how the animals try to escape from the fire or have died in the flames. “The animals have no water. We leave water in the trees for monkeys and also for crocodiles about two to three thousand liters a day, when we don’t need it to put out the fires. Andrea Pollocki, head of the local tourism agency Downstream is dry,” said Andrea Pollocki, head of the local tourism agency.

It is estimated that the fires devour about 20,000 hectares per day, which means that approximately 700,000 hectares have already been reduced to ash. “The smoke has made it very difficult to make observations and measurements via satellite imagery over the past week,” says Nicholas Carlino of the National Agricultural Cooperative Coninagro, who said last Tuesday that the fields of yerba mate (Argentine herbal tea, editor). At least 3.71 million euros were lost, in addition to 40 million euros in rice crops, and at least 70,000 head of livestock died in the fire, according to the organization.

According to Enrique Viale, president of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, the heavy losses caused by the fires are “a sad example of the impact of climate change and human activity on the environment and causing economic losses.” The cause of the disaster, he said, must be sought in “the horrible combination of major drought, global climate change, along with poor local development models based on exotic forests, rice paddies and wetland livestock”.

Provincial Governor Gustavo Valdes last Friday appealed to regional and national governments for “extraordinary help out of this hell”.