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Fire in Juquery Park near the metropolis of São Paulo
Photo: Gustavo Basso / imago images / NurPhoto
A fire near the Brazilian city of São Paulo destroyed more than half of a 2,000 hectare nature reserve.
According to the government in the state of São Paulo of the same name, a hot air balloon caused the fire in Juquery Park.
The fire burned about 1,200 acres of land before it could be brought under control by about a hundred firefighters, a fire department spokesman said.
Most of the animals living in the nature park, including birds and small mammals, survived the fire well.
Like most of the southern and southeastern states of Brazil, São Paulo has long suffered from a drought.
The city of São Paulo, where winter temperatures are usually measured at this time of year, recently recorded a heat record of 31 degrees Celsius, which could even be exceeded this week.
Around 100,000 fires were registered in 2020
Fires have not been uncommon in Brazil for a long time.
In the recent past, forest fires have raged repeatedly in various regions of the country with a population of 210 million, for example in the Amazon region and in the Pantanal, one of the largest inland wetlands in the world.
Around 100,000 fires were registered in the Amazon region in 2020.
This emerges from a new climate report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on the situation in South America.
In the Pantanal area alone, which stretches between Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil, 26 percent of the total area burned last year - four times as much as the average for the last two decades.
In the Brazilian Amazon region, the number of fires in the first half of the year was below that of the devastating previous years - but as many trees were felled between March and June of this year as last year in 2015, the data shows (read more about the dramatic situation in Brazil here ).
bam / AFP