(CN) — Last year’s wildfires in the world’s largest natural wetland area were a disaster for the wildlife that inhabited it.
The fires in the Pantanal wetland of Brazil killed nearly 17 million lizards, birds, primates and other types of animals, according to a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
“The Pantanal case also reminds us that the cumulative impact of widespread burning would be catastrophic,” the report states. “During the last few years we have been witnessing an astonishing increase in intensity and the frequency of wildfires, leading to a globally unprecedented amount of burnt area.”
The fires burned between January and November 2020, affecting more than 24,000 square miles. Walfrido Moraes Tomas, Ronaldo Morato and other researchers estimate these conflagrations immediately killed 16.952 million vertebrates.
The researchers found 302 carcasses and in most cases were able to identify the species, despite their poor conditions. They applied distance sampling to reach an estimate the total number killed. They believe most of the dead wildlife were small vertebrates, including small lizards, birds and rodents.
The report recommends “proper biomass fuel management” to dodge the impacts caused by fire to ecosystems.
“The case of the Pantanal reminds us that integrated fire management, as well as the implementation of sustainable land use and restoration to mitigate the inevitable impact of climate change are a crucial part of our survival strategy, given our dependency on ecosystems, their biodiversity, and services.”
What the losses portend isn’t clear. The impacts of wildfire on wildlife are still poorly known, the report says.
What is clear is climate change is making things worse, in the Pantanal and elsewhere. The report states climate change predictions for the region show a 30% rainfall decrease between 2070 and 2100, an increase in temperature and frequency of extreme weather. There was a 40% shortage of rainfall in 2020, as well as a 2-degree Celsius increase in the average temperature since 1980.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, the Pantanal covers 42 million acres across Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. The conservation organization describes the area as “one of the most biologically rich environments on the planet with more than 4,700 plant and animal species.” The region hosts South America’s highest concentration of some species, such as caiman and the jaguar.
Thursday’s report notes that most of the region is classified by UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve, the world's third-largest, and that the Brazilian Constitution lists it as part of the nation's heritage.
Wildfires continued worldwide this year, emitting 1.76 billion tons of carbon globally in 2021, Reuters reported last week, citing the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. This is the equivalent of twice Germany's annual carbon dioxide emissions.
In North America, fires in Canada and the western U.S. emitted about 83 million tons of carbon dioxide. Massive smoke plumes drifted across the continent to the Atlantic and reached Europe. And California’s Dixie Fire torched nearly 1 million acres to become the largest recorded fire in state history, the wire service reported.
An October report in the New York Times cited a study by Douglas C. Morton, who heads the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, that showed at least 22% of the Pantanal in Brazil had burned since January 2021.
Said Morton: “The extent of fires is staggering."
Normally, the Times story said, fires in the Parnatal are contained “by the landscape’s mosaic of water.” But drought this year “sucked these natural barriers dry.”
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