The fires that have raged out of control for nearly a month to the north of Buenos Aires were a disaster waiting to happen, according to environmentalists, who for years have warned of the danger posed by the spread of the slash-and-burn technique for clearing pastureland in the area.
The expansion of the practice was fuelled by a new bridge over the Paraná river delta in northeastern Argentina, which facilitated the transportation of livestock to the islands.
But environmentalists say the main cause of the increasing use of the slash-and-burn technique in the delta was not the bridge, but the advance of the agricultural frontier in the form of soybeans, the cultivation of which has pushed stockbreeding to the islands -- and not only to the banks, as was common in the past in times of drought, but to the entire islands.
The islands were formed by the sediment carried by the Paraná river -- South America’s second-largest, after the Amazon -- as it flows south, dividing into numerous channels that run into the Río de la Plata (River Plate) estuary. The delta is a huge forested marshland made up of islands, inlets and water channels rich in biodiversity.
In the delta, farmers have traditionally set fire to dry grass, in order to make way for new growth for grazing. But over the last decade, cattle-raising has become more widespread in the area, paving the way for the current disaster.
Jorge Cappato with the Fundación Proteger, a local environmental group, said cattle are no longer seen grazing along the highway running from Buenos Aires to the northeastern province of Santa Fe. "They’re on the islands now," he said.
Citing the current knowledge on soil conservation, climate change and protection of biodiversity, Cappato said the slash-and-burn technique is "an obsolete and irresponsible practice, especially when it is carried out in a widespread, systematic manner."
Between 2003 and 2005 alone, the head of cattle grew from 40,000 to 190,000 on the islands joined by the 60-km bridge connecting the cities of Victoria (in the province of Entre Ríos) and Rosario (in Santa Fe). Prior to the construction of the roadlink, which was opened to traffic in 2003, cattle were ferried to the islands on boats.
A law passed by the province of Entre Ríos in 2004 also encouraged the leasing of public land on the islands for grazing, further increasing the pressure on the soil.
The firefighter’s quote was extracted from a 2004 report, "Burning for Money", by the Taller Ecologista de Rosario (Ecological Workshop of Rosario) and the Foro Ecologista de Paraná (Ecological Forum of Paraná), which warned of the "urgent" need for a sustainable management plan to prevent further damages in the delta, affected at the time by a fire that swept through 25,000 hectares of land.
"We produced that report because in Rosario that year we were covered by smoke for 10 days," Elba Stancich, a member of the Taller Ecologista, told IPS.
Another alert was sounded in 2006, in the "Burning for Money II" report, which contained concrete proposals for sustainable management of the area.
But neither warning brought results. And this year, the smoke reached Buenos Aires.
The first fires broke out on the islands in the delta in early April, in the southern part of the province of Entre Ríos and later in the northern portion of the province of Buenos Aires. Despite the fires seen in earlier years, after the smell of burning and smoke reached the capital, it took more than a week for the authorities to publicly identify the origin of the problem.
Only after the smoke had caused two fatal traffic pileups in the area, as a result of low visibility, and had reached Uruguay and its capital city Montevideo, did the Secretariat of the Environment and Sustainable Development begin to take action.
At one point, 1,200 separate fires covered more than 70,000 hectares of land -- unprecedented for this time of year in that region.
Nearly three weeks after firefighters were first called in, the flames have not been completely smothered. The difficulties of access, low visibility for airplanes caused by the smoke, high winds and scant rainfall have compounded the problem, say the Secretariat of the Environment’s Fire Management Plan authorities.
But non-governmental organisations have expressed "indignation" over the central government’s "neglect" and carelessness, and blamed the government of Entre Ríos for the law on the leasing of public land on the islands.
"We have been warning about this since 1996, when the slash-and-burn practice began to be used in the area," said Stancich. "In 1999, before the Rosario-Victoria bridge was built, we said the fires were going to get worse.
"Soy crops had already pushed cattle onto the islands in the Paraná, from Formosa," farther to the north, she said, adding that the bridge merely facilitated and reduced the cost of transporting cattle.
Both small and large farmers have leased land on the island for grazing. The provincial governments have put out to tender 160,000 hectares and leased another 111,000. Some farmers have rented a few hectares, while others have leased up to 800, said Stancich. But most of the farmers do not live in the area, which tends to make them less scrupulous and more careless when they set fires to clear the land, she said.
The national government has identified several farmers whose land is burning, and filed complaints against them before the courts. Four people have been arrested.
But there have also been complaints against and calls for an investigation of the Secretariat of the Environment.
The Fundación para la Defensa del Ambiente (Environmental Defence Foundation) brought a complaint against Environment Secretary Romina Picolotti for "breach of duties". The head of the organisation, Raúl Montenegro, said the Secretariat had acted "tardily, and poorly."
"The National Institute of Agricultural Technology had detected three separate fires on the islands in early April, but the Secretariat only reacted towards the middle of the month, when the problem was much more serious," said Montenegro.
On Friday, a group of around 100 local residents from San Pedro, a town north of Buenos Aires on the banks of the Paraná river, took a boat to the Vuelta del Sur island in the delta to help fight the fires, which in the end were finally put out by rain.
"We’re not experts, we’re just local people and farmers using homemade equipment to fight the fires," said Alejandro Guzzo, referring to a tractor mounted on a trailer, which served as a makeshift water spray truck. "We wanted to show that where there is a will, there’s a way, and that the fires can be put out; it’s not an inaccessible area."
Source: IPS News
