Nearly 100,000 hectares of wetlands in the Paraná Delta have burned as a result of intentional fires that have plagued this nature reserve in northeastern Argentina in recent weeks.
According to satellite monitoring of the fires carried out by the National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE), it was determined that the flames destroyed 95,000 hectares in the provinces of Entre Ríos and Santa Fe.
The wetland has been the epicenter of fires for two years, which according to the authorities are caused by the burning of grasslands by locals. The drop in the Paraná River and the lack of rain make the fire uncontrollable, generating smoke that reaches as far as Buenos Aires.
Four people are detained on suspicion of having started the new fires about 15 days ago.
No victims were reported, but environmental groups warn daily about the damage caused to the area’s ecosystem.
As the province’s firefighters are not enough to fight the fire, the governor of Santa Fe, Omar Perotti, asked the national government this Friday to send the Armed Forces to the area. There has still been no response.
“It is difficult because the behavior of the fire is erratic… it jumps from one side and jumps from the other, it is a fire that is not unpredictable but it is difficult to follow it,” Victoria volunteer fire chief Claudio Daydé told The Associated Press in Entre Ríos, who was facing the flames on the side of a highway.
“Every year there have been fires; this year what we have is the conjunction of climatic and hydrographic factors that make up a particular scenario,” said the firefighter. “The consolation I find is when I look at a superior, at colleagues from the United States, Canada, Spain, Portugal, France, who put a lot of resources into fighting forest fires and yet it is not easy for them. They can’t control it either.”
Meanwhile, smoke and ash reached the Argentine capital, where visibility was low, especially in the north.
The National Meteorological Service warned that for the weekend the atmosphere is expected to be moderately to highly cloudy due to the presence of smoke in Buenos Aires and its surroundings. “The evolution in the coming days will be strongly conditioned by the number and permanence of local fires,” the agency warned.
Around one million hectares have burned due to the fires that have occurred since 2020, according to calculations by different environmental organizations that are promoting in Congress the passage of a law that includes the crime of ecocide in the Penal Code.