ROBOR, Bolivia (AP) — The burning of forests in Bolivia is stoking another debate between environmentalists and sectors critical of the evo Morales government who blame agro-industrials for the destruction of a vast forest neighboring the Brazilian Amazon.” There is a demonization of the sector and I think it is not fair. They’re turning us as a scapegoat. The agricultural sector is the one that feeds the country,” Gary Rodriguez, manager of the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade, linked to agro-industrials, told The Associated Press.
On the opposite side, agriculture researcher Miguel Crespo explained that the livestock and agro-industrial sector “is the most predatory of forests” because it “does not make good use of land and seeks new land to expand the agricultural frontier” for soybeans, cane and other crops destined for the domestic market and export. HELP US Click the Google News star and follow usCrespo assured us that “behind this disaster is the expansion of the agricultural frontier with serious environmental impacts”. One million hectares of crop land and forests have been burning for a month and a half in Bolivia, according to the non-governmental organization Fundación Amigos de la Nature and other environmentalists, while the government talks about half a million hectares destroyed. Morales admitted that between 20% and 30% of what the fire swept away was virgin forest. Crespo said that the burnt forest is enabled for agriculture and so the forest is reduced every year.
Bolivia has 3.9 million hectares of pastures for livestock and 1.6 million hectares for agriculture. Much of what is produced is export soybeans, the cultivation of which “depends a million people,” according to Rodriguez.
Cattlemen complain about cow deaths caused by fires and wildlife environmentalists from death. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) ranks Bolivia among the ten transgenic soybean-producing countries. In addition, the Andean nation is among the eight biodiversity-rich countries on the planet. Rodriguez said that “70% of the food” consumed by Bolivia is produced in Santa Cruz, the thriving agro-industrial region where forest fires are located in the Chiquitanía area, a unique dry forest that stretches beneath the Andean slopes in a vast plain that connects with the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.These forests are unique in the world because they are home to pollinating bees, key to maintaining biodiversity. “A lot of diversity has been lost and the cost of this disaster is very high,” Crespo explained, Environmentists and critical sectors blame Morales’ government for being permissive with burning and loosening environmental standards. The ruler hired the world’s largest tanker aircraft to appease the expansion of fire in Chiquitanía and announced the arrival of another American helicopter. In the afternoon, Morales announced that Russia will send a 49,000-litre water-capacity tanker. “They’re lending us this plane and we’re going to run their expenses,” he explained at a press conference. Fumigating planes have joined the task. On the ground, 4, 500 men extinguish the flames. Half a hundred Argentine brigadiers joined the fight against the fire on Friday. Morales said the day before that of the 8,000 active hotspots in the Bolivian Amazon and Chiquitanía the day before there were only 684 left, but acknowledged that drought, heat and wind trigger the flames.” There is a shared responsibility with the world” in this situation, Morales said in a report to the press. On Friday afternoon, Bolivian police commander Yuri Calderón reported that six people were arrested – including five Bolivians and one Chilean – for a burning in a town where the fire had already been controlled.
