Rains check annual burn-offs in Amazon

Press, 31 August 1989, Page 8

Rains check annual burn-offs in Amazon

NZPA-Reuter Cachoeira Paulista, Brazil

The burning season is at its peak in the Amazon basin but unexpected rains have prevented parts of the forest from going up in smoke, the top official of Brazil’s Space Studies Institute (INPE) said yesterday. “If it keeps raining, there may be no more burnings this year,” Alberto Setzer, director of INPE’s Amazonia programme, told a press conference at the institute's satellite station in Cachoeira Paulista.

The burning season in the Brazilian Amazon usually runs between July and October when the rains subside, allowing big cattle ranchers and small farmers to burn already cleared forest of weeds or to burn virgin forest to extend farmland.

But it has been raining almost non-stop since July. Even if it stayed dry in September and October it was unlikely there would be as much destruction as in the last two

years, INPE officials said. According to the INPE, fire engulfed 125,0005 q km of the Amazon basin in 1988. About a third of the area wiped out — the size of Denmark — was virgin forest or savannah. In 1987 — the worst year for burnings yet — 204,0005 q km were burned.

So far this year only 33,1015 q km have gone up in smoke.

Mr Setzer said internal and foreign pressure on the Brazilian Government was also responsible for the decline in burnings. To calm an outcry, the State environmental agency, IBAMA, launched the “Emergency Plan for the Legal Amazon.” Seventy squads composed of IBAMA agents, State forest rangers and federal police are patrolling the Amazon under the $l2 million plan, which is partially backed by World Bank loans.

For the first time, farmers who set fire to land without permission or where burning is prohibited are being fined.

Each day IBAMA stations throughout the Amazon receive processed satellite sensor data from INPE that indicates the location and intensity of burnings in the area. A squad of eight patrolmen then descend by helicopter on the burning land. Last week IBAMA fined ranchers in the states of Para and Acre a total of 45 million cruzados (S2BM). “Only the IBAMA official knows where the squad is going ahead of time to avoid bribes by rich ranchers,” said Nairio Simoes, assistant patrol co-ordinator at IBAMA headquarters. The emergency campaign also includes a radio and television campaign to discourage farmers from slash-and-burn agriculture methods.

“The Government is doing something but it’s still not doing enough,” Mr Simoes said, adding that the 600 Amazon patrolmen faced a herculean task with little equipment or financial incentive.