The world’s largest tropical wetland is in danger: Scientists warn that devastating forest fires and a planned commercial waterway could mean the “end of an entire biome.”
The Pantanal, which stretches from Brazil to Bolivia and Paraguay, is larger than England at over 17 million hectares. It is one of the most biologically rich areas in the world and “a true paradise on earth,” says ecologist Karl M. Wantzen of the University of Tours and UNESCO Chair of River Culture.
“Nowhere else will you see so many hyacinth macaws, jaguars, marsh deer, anacondas, caimans, more than 300 species of fish, 500 species of birds and 2,500 species of aquatic plants,” he said The Guardian“All of that is at stake.”
Subscribe The week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news and analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for the free weekly newsletter
From our morning news roundup to our weekly Good News newsletter, get the best of the week delivered straight to your inbox.
From our morning news roundup to our weekly Good News newsletter, get the best of the week delivered straight to your inbox.
Record forest fires: “Cause for concern”
The Pantanal is “more intact and pristine” than most other wetlands in the world, World Wildlife said. It comprises about 3% of all wetlands on Earth – but less than 5% of them are protected. Most of the land is privately owned and used primarily for pasture.
This year, the Pantanal has been hit by record forest fires, with more than 1.3 million hectares reportedly burned – almost half the size of Belgium. Climate experts say the forest fire season started a month earlier than usual and was “more intense” due to strong winds, heat and low rainfall, according to the BBC.
In June alone, 1,434 fires were recorded in the first 18 days of the month – far more than in June 2020, a year of catastrophic fires that saw nearly a third of the Pantanal burn. That’s a 980% increase from the previous year, according to Brazilian government data. National Institute for Space Research Institute for International Cooperation (INPE).
And it is “cause for concern,” said the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, as the forest fire season in Brazil usually peaks in August and September.
According to a study published this week by the World Weather Allocation Service.
Human-induced climate change has made the conditions that caused the fires about 40 percent more intense and four to five times more likely, the analysis found. The Pantanal has also lost about 80 percent of its surface water since 1985, more than any other Brazilian biome.
Waterway could mean “the end of the Pantanal as we know it”
The growth of industrial soy cultivation has increased demand for a waterway to transport goods from production areas in South America to seaports in Uruguay and Argentina, The Guardian reported.
To meet this demand, the Brazilian government plans to expand almost 800 kilometers of the Río Paraguay into the Hidrovia Paraguay-Paraná (HPP) waterway.
The planned development, along with the expansion of industrial agriculture and the ongoing climate crisis, pose an “existential threat to the ecosystem,” a group of 40 scientists warned in an article published in the journal. Science of the entire environment.
The dredging required to make the river navigable for barges would further reduce the floodplains, increasing the risk of fire. “If the Hidrovia project goes ahead, the navigation of large rail barges in the Pantanal and the associated dredging in critical sections of the Paraguay River will probably mean the end of the Pantanal as we know it,” said Pierre Girard, one of the scientists involved in the study from the Federal University of Mato Grosso and the Pantanal Research Center.
The dredging would lead to a “serious deterioration of the world’s outstanding biological and cultural diversity,” the paper says. It would also threaten the livelihoods of the approximately three million indigenous people who live in and depend on the wetlands.
“I really want the world to know what is happening,” said Wantzen, the paper’s lead author. “I wanted to bring people together to clearly explain the current situation. It would be a senseless tragedy.”
