Amazon Wildfires Cross Into Brazil's Yanomami Reservation

santafenewmexican.com By MICHAEL ASTOR | Associated Press 03/14/2003

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brush fires raging out of control in Brazil's northern Amazon have entered the Yanomami Indian reservation, home to the world's largest Stone Age tribe, officials said Friday. Agricultural fires that got out of control due to extreme dryness caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon was blamed for the 335 fires burning across Roraima state, which borders Venezuela and Guyana. The fires had crossed into the Yanomami reservation, but authorities were trying to determine how far they had gone, said a press officer at Brazil's environmental ministry in Brasilia, the capital. Some 26,000 Yanomami live on a 25 million-acre (10 million hectare) reservation that straddles the border of Brazil and Venezuela. Sidnei Lima dos Santos of the Pro-Yanomami Commission, a group that works closely with the Indians, said they were flying over the reservation to assess the damage. "We learned the fire had entered the reservation yesterday (Thursday). It hadn't gotten very far, but with all the dryness things can change very fast," dos Santos said by telephone from Boa Vista, 2,100 miles (3,400 kms) northwest of Rio de Janeiro. Santos said the commission had radio contact with villages in the reservation but not with the area that was burning, near the reservation's southeastern edge. Environment Minister Marina Silva at a press conference in Brasilia said the fires in Roraima state burned along a combined extension of 160 kilometers (100 miles), of those 3 kilometers (2 miles) within the Yanomami reservation. The government could not say what the total area affected by the fires was. Silva said the fires were started by farmers to clear land and renew pasture, but then got out of control. "We will develop a permanent prevention and technical assistance effort so that farmers avoid these (burning) practices that threaten even their own families," Silva said, adding that 20,000 people live in areas threatened by fires. In 1998, when El Nino also caused severe dryness in Roraima, wild fires burned more than 1,150 square miles (3,000 square kms) of forest and scrub, part of it on Yanomami land. The 1998 fires were extinguished only when it rained. This time, meteorologists don't expect showers before March 25. Civil defense officials said the current fires are much less severe than in 1998. "It's a completely different situation," said Lt. Col. Paulo Sergio Santos Ribeiro. "In 1998 the fire was spread all across the state. Today it's concentrated in five small locations in four different municipalities." Ribeiro and the Environment Ministry said an accurate estimate of the damage would be possible only after the fires were out. About 500 firefighters, including federal troops, and five helicopters equipped with water carrying "Bambi buckets" were sent to fight the blaze. As the forest has become degraded, the fires are spreading deeper in the jungle, a trend that worries scientists. More than 95 percent of this year's fires in Roraima are in farming areas.