Minister Says If There Had Been More Cattle In The Pantanal, The Burning Disaster Would Have Been ‘Even Less’ | Politics

For the minister, the fact that the ox eats dry and flammable grass prevents the spread of fire.

“The disaster happened because we had a lot of dry organic matter that, perhaps, if we had a little more cattle in the Pantanal, this would have been an even less disaster than the one we had this year,” said the minister in the commission accompanying the actions. against fires in the Pantanal.

“The ox is the firefighter of the Pantanal, because it is he who eats that mass of grass, be it native grass or planted grass, which has been changed, it is he who eats this mass so as not to leave it as we had it this year. With the drought, the water in the subsoil also lowered the levels. This mass became a highly combustible material ”, Tereza Cristina completed.

According to the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), a body linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology, strong fires in the region consumed 14% of the Pantanal area in September of this year alone.

The area reached in the year reaches almost 33 thousand km², which is equivalent to the sum of the territory of the Federal District and Alagoas. In the same period last year, the devastation caused by the fire reached 12,948 km². The devastation observed only in the first nine months of this year already exceeds the entire year 2019, which reached 20,835 km².

In a statement, the non-governmental organization Greenpeace, which acts in defense of the environment, said that the minister’s argument was “wrong”. Greenpeace also claimed that the government promoted a dismantling of environmental management, which led to uncontrolled burning in the Pantanal.

“Faced with an already forecast scenario of severe drought, with outbreaks much higher than the average since March 2019, no effective measures have been taken to fight and prevent fires, necessary since the first semester. in Brazil, the situation would not have reached this level of seriousness ”, said the entity in the note.

Inclusion in the Amazon Council

The commission approved a requirement to suggest to President Jair Bolsonaro that the Pantanal be included in the National Council for the Legal Amazon for the next five years.

The objective is to guarantee a structure to face future fires in the biome, with more economic resources and logistical structure, including fire extinguishing devices, such as helicopters and support from the National Force and Civil Defense.

Created in February, the council is chaired by the Vice President of the Republic, Hamilton Mourão, and aims to preserve the forest.

According to Senator Simone Tebet (MDB-MS), author of the application, the Legal Amazon is part of the Pantanal biome in the state of Mato Grosso.

He also suggested that parliamentarians personally hand over the nomination to President Bolsonaro in the next week of concentrated effort by Congress, which will take place between October 19 and 23.