Wildfires rip through wetlands on islands of Paraná Delta, with heavy smoke hitting provinces of Santa Fe and Entre Ríos, as well as the capital
Wildfires are devastating wetlands on the islands of the Paraná River Delta, destroying the environment and endangering health due to heavy smoke, local authorities have warned.
“It is inevitable that setting fires in these adverse weather conditions, with a drought that has lasted four years and a strong drop in the Paraná River, is criminal. Whoever sets fire in these conditions cannot be unaware of the context in which they are doing it,Q Deputy Environment Minister, Sergio Federovisky, told Radio 10.
Setting fires to clear fileds for future planting is a regular practice in Argentina that is is repeated every year, but according to Federovisky, the fires are also used to “trafnsform wetlands into future real-estate developments”.
Burning grasslands can be seen from roads that cross the provinces of Santa Fe and Entre ríos, and smoke from the flames, which settled over the city of Rosario, some 310 kilometres north from the capital, could alsp be smelled and seen in Buenos Aires.
Three people were arrested when they were discovered setting fire to dry vegetation on wetlands near the city of Vicotria, Entre Ríos province, and were handed over the courts, a police source told AFP.
Due to the intense smoke, security officials in Santa Fe Province decided to stop traffic on the bridge that connects the cities of Rosario and Victoria, in entre Ríos.
According to the Environmental Observatory of the National University of Rosario, more than 10.000 hectares have been consumed by forest fires on the islands od the Paraná River in the last month.
Federovisky demanded greater speed from the justice system, saying that the environmental authorities had handed over to a judge in Victoria “the exact geolocation of the start of echa of the fires, provided by the heat detection cameras, installed in the area by the Environmental Ministry”.
They also asked the province for the deatils of the owners of the sites, where recurrent fires occur, in order to denounce them, because “there is a deliberate action by the owners of the fields”, the official insisted.
One complaint opened two years ago againts powerful businessmen for burning grasslands in the region did not priducde any progress in the justice system.
In Rosario. which has a population of 1.5 million, mass demonstrations have been held to demand the “cessation of intentional burning” and an urgent bill to create a Ley de Humedades (Wetlands Law).