Nearly 300 fires recorded in Amazon basin since beginning of 2021, most in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Nearly 300 fires have been recorded in the Amazon since the beginning of 2021, mostly concentrated in Brazil, where the number of fires is more than double last year, the Andean Amazon Monitoring Project (MAAP) reported Wednesday.

There are 287 major fires detected from space satellite information in the Amazon basin, shared by Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.

Brazil concentrates 77% of the fires recorded in the entire Amazonian territory, with 221 events that have affected some 57,000 hectares, followed by Bolivia with 36 (13%), Peru with 24 (8%), and Colombia with 6 (2%).

The fires in Brazil are double the number of similar events recorded on the same dates in 2020, which was already particularly intense, with 2,250 fires detected throughout the season.

Almost 70% of the fires occurring in Brazilian territory correspond to large areas that have been deforested in previous months, allegedly to install crops or clear land for livestock.

These have occurred mostly in grasslands, where an area of 35,000 hectares has been burned, and in indigenous territories belonging to the Xingu and Kayapó ethnic groups. “These areas were forest only a year ago,” warned MAAP senior researcher Matt Finer during a conference organized by the organizations Conservación Amazónica and Servir-Amazon.

By state, Mato Grosso accounts for 43% of all fires detected in Brazil, followed by Amazonas (29%), Pará (14%), Rondônia (12%), and Acre (2%).

Of the 35 fires reported in Bolivia, most have occurred in the departments of Santa Cruz and Beni, where the flames have devastated some 19,000 hectares of natural grasslands.

Meanwhile, in Peru, the fires have been concentrated in the mountainous jungle of the eastern slopes of the Andes, with a total of 2,600 hectares impacted.

In 2020, the Amazon had the third-worst year in its history, losing 2.3 million hectares of forest, an area similar to the size of El Salvador, and historic deforestation was recorded in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.