With the fires in the Pantanal intensifying in the second half of the year, the Encontro das Águas State Park, located in Mato Grosso and considered the region with the highest concentration of jaguars in the world, recorded its second worst year of fires since 2013.
The information comes from monitoring carried out by the Environmental Satellite Applications Laboratory (Lasa), at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
According to Lasa, 20.18% of the park’s area was affected by fires based on fire alerts detected by satellites. In total, there are 21,825 hectares – the third largest mark since monitoring began in 2012. In 2013, the second worst year was recorded, with 255 thousand hectares. As we are still in October, the possibility is that the accumulated result for 2023 will exceed that of 2013.
According to the State Secretariat for the Environment (Sema) of Mato Grosso, the park has the highest concentration of jaguars in the country: there are 8 jaguars every 100km, which is also a high average compared to other places in the world.
According to data from Lasa, Parque Encontro das Águas is the second region with the highest proportion of fires within the Pantanal. In first place is the Tereza Cristina indigenous land, with 48.99% of its area affected by fire.
In 2023, the Pantanal already has a burned area of 338,350 hectares. This number represents an increase compared to 2022 (227,550 ha), but a drop compared to 2021 (1,176,900 ha) and compared to 2020, considered the worst year for fires in the Pantanal, which had an area of more than 3 million hectares affected by fire.
The Mato Grosso Fire Department reported that, this Tuesday (24), three planes were used to fight the fire in the Encontro das Águas State Park. Around 30 firefighters continued throughout the afternoon to fight the fire between the Cuiabá, Canabu and São Lourenço rivers.
Source: CNN Brasil
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