A fire that started last Thursday (5) destroyed 10 thousand hectares of the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, in Goiás. According to the administration of the preservation unit, the affected area is still an estimate and is between Parallel 14 and Cachoeira Simão Correia.
In a statement released yesterday (7), the park’s management reported that it still did not know what or who caused the fire, which indicates that the conservation unit understands that it may have been criminal. The message also highlights that, from the beginning, the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) and PrevFogo, from the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), deployed personnel to help put out the fire, together with the Goiás Military Fire Department. The expectation was that two aircraft would be sent to the location today, which the report was unable to confirm, since attempts to contact them were unsuccessful.
A group organized by the Cerrado EcoScience Center carried out a joint effort today (8), for the second consecutive day, to assess the conditions of the Campo Úmido Voshysias Private Natural Heritage Reserve (RPPN), in Alto Paraíso de Goiás, close to the National Park. Just like the Murundu RPPN, visited this Saturday (7) in the same municipality, the site was affected by a fire and needed to be examined more closely, also requiring the removal of invasive exotic plant species.
The network fighting the flames also includes the Contrafogo Network, which coordinates volunteer brigades, and the Cerrado Bioregional Institute (IBC). In a video posted on social media, Ivan Anjo, from the Contrafogo Network, shares information about another point hit by flames, the Alto Paraíso de Goiás landfill.
“Every year it’s the same thing. The landfill always catches fire in the same week! In 2021 it was on September 7th, 2022 it was on September 4th, in 2023 it didn’t happen (oh glory) and this year, on September 6th it started around 10pm, while they were still taking care of the fire in Pouso Alto. [também em Alto Paraíso]. Could it just be a coincidence? The city government is not organized to monitor, oversee, and much less to combat this. They seem to like the landfill to decrease in volume every year so that they have less to manage. Dozens of families had to abandon their homes yesterday due to this incompetence. Or is it just malice? What do you think?”, says the text accompanying the video. In the comments of the post, city residents agree with the firefighter and criticize the city government.
The Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park is one of the Cerrado preservation sites, known as the “cradle of waters” and which, despite this, could lose about 34% of river flow by 2050. According to monitoring by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), this year alone, up until yesterday (7), 48,966 fire outbreaks were detected in the biome, which is second only to the Amazon (79,175).
THE Brazil Agency tried to contact ICMBio, Ibama and the city hall of Alto Paraíso de Goiás, but had not received a response by the time this article was published.
