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

The fire brigade, together with the police and volunteers, are fighting the fires that have already affected more than six percent of the territory of 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 sufficiently equipped to extinguish the many fires. “Over 600,000 hectares have already been burned, our teams can’t handle it,” said Daniel Bertorello, fire chief Daniel Bertorello of the provincial volunteer fire service in a telephone interview with Reuters news agency. “We have seaplanes and helicopters, but we just can’t handle it.”

Ibera National Park, one of the world’s largest freshwater wetlands, is also being ravaged by the fire. Rare and endangered species living in the park, such as swamp deer, alligators and more than 380 bird species, are threatened by the fire. Images show how the animals try to flee the fire or have died in the flames. “The animals have no water. We leave water in the trees for the monkeys and also for the alligators about two to three thousand liters a day, when we don’t need it to put out the fire. The estuary is dry,” said Andrea Boloqui, president of the local tourism agency.

It is estimated that about 20,000 hectares per day are consumed by the fire, which means that almost 700,000 hectares have already been reduced to ashes. “The smoke has made it very difficult for observations and measurements via satellite images over the past week,” says Nicolas Carlino of the national agricultural cooperative Coninagro, who stated last Tuesday that fields of yerba mate (an Argentine herbal tea, ed.) worth at least 3.71 million euros were lost, as well as some 40 million euros in rice crops, and at least 70,000 head of cattle died in the fire, according to the organization.

According to Enrique Viale, president of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, the huge losses from the fires are a “sad example of how climate change and human activity are damaging the environment and causing economic losses.” The cause of the disaster, he said, must be sought in “the terrible combination of a major drought, global climate change, together with poor local development models based on exotic forests, rice paddies and cattle ranching in wetlands,” he said.

Provincial Governor Gustavo Valdés last Friday pleaded with provincial and national governments for “extraordinary help to get out of this hell.”