On the road leading to the main entrance of Juquery State Park there is a smell of burning. Columns of smoke appear in the surroundings. All, luckily and at least for now, outside the last fragment of cerrado in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, victim of a brutal fire that, a year ago, consumed more than half of its area.
“There’s smoke on the horizon.” This is one of the alerts that circulate on the radios in Juquery Park. When the warning comes, it starts checking where the fire is.
On the afternoon of last Thursday (18), from the top of the park’s oscillating viewpoint, a column of white smoke could be seen on the horizon, next to Morro Ovo da Pata, one of the attractions of the protected area.
“It’s far away,” says Francisco Honda, the park’s manager. The warning had come from one of the guards who ride a motorcycle day and night through the protected area.
The park is surrounded by fire, mainly what comes from the skies, more specifically from balloons. One of these flying objects was the source of last year’s great fire. According to Honda, this year alone 54 balloons entered the park and had to be “rescued”.
The “rescue” basically means chasing the balloon and preventing it from touching the ground and starting a fire. And that, of course, is not always possible.
Juquery Park
Juquery Park area right after the fire and a year later – Bruno Santos and Eduardo Knapp/Folhapress
Close to completing one year of the previous fire, on the night of the 4th to the 5th of August, a balloon fell inside the park and the flames started. The team’s action was fast enough for only about 1 hectare to burn before the flames were brought under control.
The job of chasing balloons is the responsibility of the park’s motorized guards. The motorcycles received adaptations to carry the “witch’s brooms”, dampers with long rods to quickly fight small fires. Marco de Araújo is one of the balloon chasers.
“I already lost [a conta]. I’ve caught a lot of balloons, above 50”, says the guard, who has worked at the park for five years. “Weekends are terrible.” The months of June, July and August are usually the months of greatest concern for ballooning, which, for the most part, are small — but still potential fire causes.
Araújo lives nearby. When the message group in the protection area starts beeping constantly (the sound is even different), the guard says he’s already running to see if it’s fire and if the team on duty needs help.
Making, selling, transporting or releasing balloons is an environmental crime, with the possibility of imprisonment from 1 to 3 years and/or a fine.
The balloons arrive at the park from different areas of the city, according to Honda. This means that it is not just a problem in the region where the park is located, close to the municipalities of Franco da Rocha and Caieiras.
The manager of the conservation unit says that there is a constant work of environmental education with the people of the region, who are the main public that frequents the protected area.
And contact with the surrounding population is essential for the park, which is also threatened by other sources of fire. For example, on one side of the protected area there is a community called Nova Era where there is a constant burning of garbage.
Firefighting (all site employees are trained for this) occurs even in outbreaks outside the park, in cases of potential spread to the conservation area.
Pasture clearings and religious offerings, left by candles, complete the list of incendiary threats to the park.
burnt
The name Juquery comes from a plant (also known as dormi-maria) that, when touched, closes its leaves. Some time later, they reopen. After the gray and black of the great fire, now greenish and earthy colors predominate in the protected area. But the signs of the fire remain, especially in larger trees, whose trunks are still darkened by the flames that hit them a year ago.
The cerrado is naturally more fire-adapted compared to other biomes. But this rule is valid, mainly, for natural fires and of lesser intensity.
In the valleys (areas between hills) of the park, which concentrate the largest vegetation, the signs of fire are more visible with small dead and dry trees. They are the “toothpick holders”, which form a kind of gray curtain.
Last year, the weather contributed to the massive fire. In addition to the dry year, a frost ended up drying the vegetation even more. There was a condition known as 30 30 30, which points to a maximum risk of fire, says Honda. This means that the temperature was above 30°C, the humidity below 30% and the wind speed above 30 km/h.
It wasn’t just the vegetation that suffered from the flames. “We can see the flora of the countryside returning”, says Honda. “What about insects and pollinators? What about termites and ants that are extremely important for the Cerrado biome? What about water production?”
In the same way that the vegetation has recovered, the park’s animal life also seems to reoccupy the space, after the escape from the flames last year.
Honda says that ornithologists who visited the area recently managed to spot more than 30 species of birds in just two hours.
According to Sima (São Paulo Department of Infrastructure and Environment), the 250 forest fires recorded in 2021 in the state were mostly (75%) caused by people. In total, more than 24,000 hectares of forest were burned, of which 15,000 were within protected areas.
Only the Juquery Park and its immediate surroundings had nine fires recorded last year. The biggest one, in August, burned more than 900 hectares of the approximately 2,000 hectares of the protected area.
Sima says that this year, 187 people were fined and four clandestine balloon factories were closed. São Paulo has, annually since 2010, the so-called Operation Corta-Fogo, specifically aimed at reducing fires across the state. This operation has been in its red phase since June (which extends until October), at which time inspections are reinforced.
