By March 25, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had already crossed much of the world, leaving a trail of death and despair. Argentina was no exception: five days earlier, the country’s government had declared an era of mandatory social isolation to help curb the spread of coronavirus. However, the crisis of public fitness has not prevented loggers from felling trees in Argentina’s Gran Chaco.
Photographs captured through the Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 satellites leave little doubt. In Argentina’s northern formosa province, which borders Paraguay, an excavator operated in violation of the quarantine order took advantage of the forest’s solitude to open bites, or shortcut trails, 10 meters (33 feet) wide.
The felled trees were about 7 kilometers (about four miles) from the Bermejo River, just opposite El Impenetrable National Park. They were in a place that purports to be the buffer zone of the national park, but receives little active protection, according to the Plan for Territorial Management of Indigenous Forests (OTBN).
“What they are doing is obviously illegal,” said Riccardo Tiddi, an Italian physicist who has lived in Argentina’s Gran Chaco for many years and is a member of a citizen platform called Somos Monte, in Spanish for “We are the forest.” Somos Monte’s project is to protect the ecosystems and population of the forests of Gran Chaco. “This [logging] not only does not respect the legal responsibility to remain at home due to coronavirus, but also, in accordance with provincial law 1660, any activity that is replaced in land use must go through a prior public hearing.” , he would have been with the country paralyzed for fitness reasons, ” said Tiddi.
The land is part of La Fidelidad, a massive ranch that, until the murder of its former owner in 2011, occupied a total of 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres) on both sides of the Bermejo River. Fidelidad enjoys a higher point of biodiversity and the efforts of several environmental organizations have remodeled 128,000 hectares (316,000 acres) of its southern sector, which is part of chaco province, into a national park. However, the 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of its northern sector have been protected. As a result, the domain has been subjected to excavators that are now not unusual for it.
In December 2019, Franco Del Rosso, former director of the herbal resources branch in neighboring Formosa province, said: “The ranch is still in the process of being approved. We have news that it could become a personal reserve in the future. Their shifts To recommend the ecological price of La Fidelidad, however, according to Tiddi, “the type of bite they opened does not seem adequate in this regard”.
The trails recently opened the internal canopy of La Fidelidad in a total of 40 km (25 miles) in a domain of approximately 7,000 to 8,000 hectares (17,300 to 19,800 acres) of local forest, according to aerial estimates. This forest is likely to become land for livestock, soybeans or maize, according to regional observations and trends in recent years.
Mongabay Latam tried to contact the government of the Formosa Department of Natural Resources, but got a response. However, locals say the March 2020 occasions violated regulations that require a public hearing before the land was cleared.
Bulldozers are not an unusual spectacle under current circumstances. In Argentina’s Gran Chaco, deforestation has relentlessly plagued indigenous forests, adding spaces that deserve to be under the country’s forest law in 2007. According to Argentina’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, Gran Chaco, the largest forest in South America after the Amazon, accounts for 87% of general deforestation in Argentina. Approximately five million hectares (12.4 million acres) were destroyed in the first two decades of the 21st century.
On May 20 of this year, NASA two before-and-after photographs of the Gran Chaco in Salta Province, one december 2000 and one december 2019, as its “Images of the Day”, the magnitude of the devastation appearing in this period. .
In Formosa province, 99,522 hectares (245,924 acres) of forest have been cut down with machinery for more than 4 years. And deforestation in the other provinces that make up the rest of the ecoregion is not left behind.
On the thirteenth of March, a few days before the dismantling of La Fidelidad, the government stopped 3 illegal dismounts in other spaces in the western component of Chaco province. The 3 clearings covered a total of 185 hectares (457 acres).
In January 2020, Greenpeace Argentina captured aerial images of deforestation on six farms in Chaco province. “The concept is not only to denounce it, but also to alert the local government to act if necessary,” said Hernández Giardini, coordinator of the organization’s forest crusade at the time.
Authorities in Chaco province have shown that deforestation occurs with authorization in one of the six locations, so the government has initiated proceedings to deal with the crime.
In the remaining five cases, the deforested spaces were close to Copo National Park and the Loro Hablador Provincial Natural Park. Although environmental organizations demanded immediate sanctions in such cases, the government says deforestations were authorized. Affected spaces will be converted into farmland or pastures for livestock.
Satellite photographs revealed the dismounting of two farms in the west of Salta province between September and October 2019. One clearing had a domain of three hundred hectares (740 acres) in the District of Anta, and the other, in the district of General San Martín, covered 530 hectares. Hectares. (1310 acres). “They were authorized,” said Silvina Borelli, director of the follow-up and audit program at Salta’s Ministry of Sustainable Production and Development.
CoVID-19 quarantine in Argentina has not advanced this situation. The most recent report published through Greenpeace indicates that in the first month of quarantine there were 6,565 hectares (16,222 acres) of deforestation in the Gran Chaco. Approximately part of this deforested domain is located in the province of Santiago del Estero.
“In the provinces there is a network of force – economic, political and judicial – that hinders any kind of legal application and facilitates [forest] logging,” said Matas Mastr-ngelo, a biologist for studies at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research. Argentina (CONICET). Mastr-ngelo is also an expert in advertising interests in the Chaco forests.
The daily truth confirms his explanation. Logging in the Gran Chaco, driven by industries that, as in the Amazon, seek to gain land for agricultural and livestock activities, has declined in recent years, but is far from over.
Argentine forest law is applied because its implementation, supervision and the resulting sanctions have Argentine provincial administrations, “and corruption thrives there,” said Micaela Camino, a biologist and member of Somos Monte.
Juan Cabandié, the new Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, surprised listeners during an interview on May 15 with the Argentine media Red / Action. “Obviously, there are things that want to be replaced in the [forest] law because you can simply say that the law supports deforestation. Where there is no territorial order, [deforestation] is not illegal, and where there is category 3 (areas that allow productive activities), it is also not illegal, but they are vital indigenous forest basins,” Cabandié said. His may provoke a debate, but he also acknowledges the fact on the ground: the Chaco continues to lose forests per hectare.
“If a national law says one thing, provincial law cannot say Array. That’s why everything that happens in the chaco forests is illegal,” Camino said.
“The provinces are encouraged to comply with what the law says and succumb to pressure from local authorities,” mastr-ngelo said.
Periodically positions are taken that do not adhere to legal proceedings. For example, in areas of the Green Box, where agriculture and livestock are permitted, public hearings are not held and sometimes it is unnecessary those that have an environmental effect on the tests. “They copy from one register to another, turning only knowledge into the farms,” mastangelo said.
In the yellow category, spaces with local forests are not protected, although the law requires trees to stand to initiate any type of agricultural or livestock activity. Finally, protected spaces, or red spaces, are considered safe from indiscriminate logging, but they are slowly becoming forested islands in the middle of a sea of pastures for livestock, which poses a serious risk to biodiversity.
Argentina’s Gran Chaco suffers from a wide variety of problems, however, deforestation is its most serious problem. The risks of deforestation come with habitat destruction, adjustments in herbal soil characteristics, alterations in the hydrological and climatic dynamics of the forest, and even the social and economic collapse of communities around the forest. Current trends recommend that these dangers to ecosystems continue as agricultural and animal boundaries expand.
In early 2020, Jorge Capitanich, governor of Chaco province, announced the 2020-2030 livestock progression plan. Its purpose is particularly to expand the grasslands to increase the number of farm animals in Chaco province to 700,000 over the next 10 years. “It will take place whether we like it or not. What we deserve to check is the dating between what is said through the forest law and the personal sector to make our productive exploitation as sustainable as possible,” said Alejandro Brown. President of the ProYungas Foundation.
A ranch called La Media Legua is located a few kilometers from the city of Juan José Castelli in the province of Chaco, along the road that leads to El Impenetrable National Park. Its 3,350 hectares (approximately 8,278 acres) belong to the Pontius family and conservation organizations cite it as an example of sustainable practices.
“We are dedicated to silvopastoril production,” said Pablo Pontius, one of the ranch members, as he drove his truck down a dirt road. Silvopasture is composed of the combination of cattle and trees on the same ground. According to the law, to qualify as a forester, 120 trees per hectare must be left in a state. “About part of the land is used to create pastures for animals, but we do so by keeping much of the forest cover. For us, this is more successful than classical agriculture, and we believe it is the way to use resources in harmony with the environment,” Poncio said, pointing out the shaded spaces where cows and steers leave to escape the intense Gran Chaco. Heat.
The La Media Legua ranch is part of the yellow zone of the OTBN plan, which requires the original forest to remain in 50% of the land. Pontius stopped his truck at the precise place where land use is divided. The difference is clear: in one aspect a forest with an aggregate of vegetation. In the other aspect a shaded forest that is easy to navigate without many obstacles. “If we put photographic traps in the silvopastoril area, we would see the animals living in the forest pass from side to side,” Pontius said.
This case may be the norm, but it’s almost the opposite. Not far from La Media Legua, there is a giant cereal farm with 3 or 4 trees appearing on the horizon. There’s no cattle, no shade, no forest. The landscape can coincide with that of the partly giant, treeless Pampean plains, located many kilometers to the south, where the climate and the situation of the soil are very different. However, cereal farm owners also claim to use silvopastoril production.
According to the locals, it is not unusual for manufacturers to claim that they did not play any role in destroying the forest for their crops or herds.
“As soon as authorization is obtained, the maximum non-unusual procedure is to report that a fire occurred spontaneously during the dry season. Subsequently, when most of the forest has been burned, a replacement is requested in land use. They give it to the big producers,” said Claudio, a neighbor of Juan José Castelli, son of small farmers, and asked that his call not be disclosed for the sake of his family’s privacy.
One way or another, deforestation continues to destroy the Gran Chaco. The consequences of the devastation have been rigorously studied. In addition to environmental impacts, Aboriginal peoples are wasting land than their cultural heritage. Agricultural engineer Ana Alvarez compares the loss of wisdom resulting from deforestation with the destruction of museums or giant libraries.
Other consequences of deforestation, such as wind erosion and pesticide contamination, are being discovered.
“We are not experts, but we can see the progress of logging [forestry] over the past 15 or 20 years,” said Daniel Liberatti, a resident of El Impenetrable National Park and a member of a farmer. Group. Liberatti and his circle of relatives live in the forest, 10 km from Villa Río Bermejito, a village in the northwestern component of Chaco province, and he is a direct witness to the changes. “Before, there could be a maximum of six months without rain. Today, a year and a component can pass without a drop of rain. But when it rains, it rains a lot and the water stayed in the ponds, but now the earth no longer absorbs it,” Liberatti said.
Scientific studies those observations. A comparative examination conducted through the National Institute of Agricultural Technology in 2016 indicates that one hectare of high-quality forest in the Gran Chaco can absorb up to three hundred millimeters (12 inches) of rain in an hour. The same surface absorbs one hundred millimeters (4 inches) of hour-consistent water when covered with grass and only 30 millimeters (1.2 inches) consistent with the hour when planted with soybeans.
Droughts in the region have been prolonged, and in turn floods have become more violent. The last flood, in February 2020, occurred in a soybean crop domain in southwestern chaco. “The heavy machinery used for direct planting compacts the soil, forming very hard blocks that infiltrate rainwater,” said Julieta Rojas, agronomist at the experimental station of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA).
“In the Chaco region, a productive formula has been replicated that is not suitable for this area,” Alvarez said. “You can’t think of agriculture the same way in the Pampée region, where temperatures are mild and humidity is plentiful, as in the Chaco, where there is 40 degrees Celsius or 104 degrees Fahrenheit and it does not rain for much of the year. . “
The effects of agrochemical application are the last sip of a dark cocktail. “The law states that it is to leave tree curtains on the edges of the fields,” Alvarez said. “But in practice, they are affected by the aerial application of agrochemicals and those trees die between 3 and 5 years after being planted.”
Flora, fauna and others suffer the effect of deforestation. Liberatti painted a bleak panorama: “In the district of villa Bermejito, where we live, you can no longer see nandou [birds] or velvety armadillos of the Andes. Black howler monkeys die because they sacrificed the carob trees where they lived, and the plants were shrinking. Pumas hunt goats and foals because they want to take refuge in the few spaces where there has been no deforestation. The near extinction of the jaguar, which is used as a symbol of the entire ecosystem, in Argentina is perhaps one of the most productive manifestations of the environmental crisis that was created.
“Without forests there is no life,” said Sofá Nuez, a member of the Qom Indians in Laguna Patos.
“For those in the rural area, the forest is a source of food, raw materials, wood, fruits to feed their livestock [and] medicines,” said Lucas Giraudo, who participates in projects similar to the interaction between indigenous forests and inhabitants. . Your.
“There are other people who just leave the woods for a party or to go to a gym. They don’t know urban life and they run with their own codes, very different from ours,” said Walter Gonzalez, a small dining room owner. Villa Rio Bermejito. For several years, González lived in Mission New Pompeii, a city in Chaco province within El Impenetrable National Park.
From a social point of view, the main result is the abandonment of its forests. “There is less and less chance of survival,” Alvarez said. “People are displaced and cornered in strongholds of 1,000 or 2,000 hectares [between 2,500 and 5,000 acres] with few characteristics for raising their animals, and become dependent on the pensions or bills they obtain from the government. Surrounded by barbed wire, they also have serious disturbances with access to water.
When there is no other solution, the destination is occasionally the suburbs of the cities, where many indigenous and Creole peoples arrive after wasting their rural properties, customs, forests and pieces of their culture. In general, they face a difficult adaptation to a social formula that tends to marginalize them. The greatest generalized emotion of all those produced by the relentless and permanent clearing of the Argentine Gran Chaco is sadness.
This story was first reported through Latam’s team on Mongabay and was posted here on our Latam online page on May 28, 2020.
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