Brazil's Fire Woes Escalate as ‘Amazon Caribbean’ Is Hit by Blaze
Brazil's Fire Woes Escalate as ‘Amazon Caribbean’ Is Hit by Blaze
(Bloomberg) -- A fire sweeping through Brazil’s “Amazon Caribbean,” a major tourist attraction in western Para state, added to the increasing numbers of blazes scorching the Latin American country.
Para Governor Helder Barbalho asked for support from the federal government to fight the fire as dry and windy weather hampers efforts to combat the blaze. Part of the Alter do Chao region erupted in flames two days ago, according to the state’s government website. Details on the land area weren’t reported.
Police are investigating the cause of the fire. More than 120,000 blazes have swept across the country since January, up 49% from a year earlier, according to Inpe, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. Almost half are in the Amazon rainforest, which last month spurred domestic and international pressure on the federal government to tackle deforestation with more urgency.
In Para, fires almost doubled to 15,300 from a year earlier. That’s the second-highest number of alerts for a single state. Beyond the beach attractions at the fringe of the Tapajos River, the state is home to the country’s expanding cattle herd.
The number of cattle in the state has doubled to more than 20 million head since the early 2000s, or almost twice the size of the herd in the Texas, according to data from Brazil’s Statistics & Geographic Institute.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tatiana Freitas in São Paulo at tfreitas4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Attwood at jattwood3@bloomberg.net, Patrick McKiernan
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