Colombia: Fires set “capital” on “environmental alert”

A state of “environmental alert” has been declared in Bogota, which is threatened by the smoke of two forest fires that have been raging for a few days in Colombia’s Amazon and are now the size of a large city like Paris, local authorities announced on Saturday.

The winds are pushing the smoke of the fires, which according to the government are due to arson by illegal armed organizations, some 350 kilometers northwest, to the capital of Colombia.

“The city is sounding the alarm,” Mayor Claudia Lopez said on Twitter, with more than half of the air quality monitoring stations showing high levels of air pollution for 48 hours non-stop.

The elected official asked the 8 million inhabitants of the Colombian capital to refrain from any physical activity outdoors in the coming days.

The government believes the fires were caused by “hands of criminals”, militants who decided not to abide by the peace agreement between the then government and the former Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC).

The insurgents, as they are called, intend to “take control of land (…) for illegal activities” such as “extensive cattle breeding”, according to Defense Minister Diego Molano, who released a list of 17 alleged arsonists.

A “red alert” was issued in the prefecture of Gaviare (southeast), whose governor Eider Palacio spoke of “100,000 acres” destroyed by fire.

The Serania del Ciribikete National Natural Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is also affected.

According to testimonies gathered by the French Agency in October in the area, farmers and landowners use the dry season from January to April to burn cut trees, plant coca plants in their place, or use the land as cattle pastures. .

According to the Colombian government, deforestation in recent years has grown exponentially in the part of the country that runs through the Amazon, partly due to the fact that after the peace agreement FARC units abandoned vast areas they controlled. Other armed groups rushed to fill the gap, thanks to the absence and inaction of the state apparatus in these remote areas.

January 2022 was the hottest month in the last decade in the Colombian Amazon, with more than 3,300 “hot spots” in the six counties that make it up, according to a report by the Ministry of Environment.

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