About 150,000 hectares of forests are lost each year in Peru as a result of forest fires, Rocha Vásquez, a Climate Change and Forests program at the Law, Environment and Natural Resources (DAR) organization told Sputnik.
“In Peru, there are regions such as Cusco (south) that, according to the National Institute of Civil Defense and the Forest and Wildlife Service, have recurrent forest burns and where at least one fire per year affects at least 1,000 hectares”, you can read in the aforementioned website.
Among the reasons behind these phenomena, says the expert, are the land trade and speculation, but also farmers generate fires to use them for their crops, however, according to Vásquez, these types of burns are considered “normal”.
“In general, fire is a widespread element in the landscape of the Amazon and is used as an agricultural practice to clean recently deforested areas, to develop agricultural activities”, he continued. “There is a problem because of the type of soil that the Amazon has”, he said.
According to DAR, the years in which the largest forest fires in Peru have been recorded coincide with those with the most acute droughts.
Cover Photo Max Pixel.
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