In 2024, Brazil’s Amazon rainforest experienced its highest number of fires in 17 years, government data released Wednesday showed, after the vast biome suffered months of prolonged drought.
According to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), during the year, 140,328 fires using satellite images.
This was 42 percent more than the 98,634 fires recorded in 2023, and the most since 2007, when 186,463 wildfires were recorded.
However, despite the high number of fires, there are indications that the total area affected by deforestation could be the lowest in years.
At the beginning of November, the INPE stated that Deforestation in the region in the 12-month period to August 2024 had decreased by more than 30 percent, year after year, and was at the lowest level in nine years.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silvahas made the preservation of the Amazon a priority for his government, which in November of this year will host the UN COP30 climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belém.
The EU’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service, the body that monitors Europe’s climate, said last month that a severe drought had fueled wildfires in South America in 2024.
Last year, thick columns of smoke covered some major cities, including Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulocausing suffocating pollution that persisted for several weeks.
Drought has hit the Amazon region since mid-2023, driven by man-made climate change and the global warming phenomenon. The Child.
This helped create the conditions for massive fires, but experts say most fires were deliberately set by farmers to clear land for agriculture.
Scientists warn that continued deforestation will put the Amazon on track to a point where will emit more carbon than it absorbs, accelerating climate change.
The number of charapa turtles born in the Guaporé Valley, on the border between Brazil and Bolivia and the main nesting area of this Amazonian chelonian, fell from 1.4 million in 2023 to 700,000 in 2024 as a consequence of climate changes, sources said. officers
“We registered a 50% drop in the number of births because climate changes affected the reproduction cycle of this species,” he told EFE the superintendent of the Brazilian Environmental Institute (Ibama) in the Amazonian state of Rondonia, César Luiz Guimarães.
The specialist explained that, in addition to a historic drought this year that reduced the levels of the Amazon rivers to a minimum, the region was affected by record forest fires that covered the sky with smoke and, already in December, with extreme rains that caused floods and drowned the young in the nests.
The number of births was calculated last week when Ibama members carried out a campaign to remove hatchlings from nests buried in the sand and take the turtles to safe places before releasing them into the river away from their predators.
On Sunday alone it was possible to save 200,000 hatchlings and temporarily place them in protected fences, but, as hatchings are still expected in the next five days, Ibama’s forecast is that the number of births will be limited to 700,000 this year.
The charapa Podocnemis expandedalso known as arrau or Amazonian turtle in Brazil, are the largest species of freshwater turtle in South America and a large part of its females usually go in August, September and October to the high beaches of the Guaporé River to lay their eggs, which makes this region their largest breeding site.
The nests are located in an area with a radius of 30 kilometers on seven Guaporé beaches, five on the Brazilian side and two on the Bolivian side.
“Of the five beaches that we always visit to look for nests, this year we only recorded hatchings on one. In the other four there were no births,” said the Ibama superintendent.
(With information from AFP and EFE)
