Portugal sends firefighting experts to help Brazil with Pantanal blazes

Portugal is sending two experts to Brazil for a collaborative mission to “analyse and strategically manage” fires currently raging in the Pantanal region, the Agency for the Integrated Management of Rural Fires (AGIF) said in a statement today. The experts, representing the agency and the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF), will be in the Pantanal, in the Mato Grosso do Sul region , between August 10 – 21. During the trip the pair will be joined by a member of the PJ Judicial Police, who will collaborate until the end of the month with Brazilian experts on the methodology for determining the causes of fires and studying cases. The mission aims to “identify strategies for suppressing active fires and to carry out an integrated analysis of the use of fire in this region (…) Drought situations, meteorological forecasts and the growing number of hotspots in the Pantanal (and other Brazilian regions) suggest a very complicated period, in which fires are becoming increasingly intense and frequent, jeopardising the regeneration capacity of the region’s ecosystems,” the statement adds.