Puerto Suárez (Bolivia) (AFP)
Bolivia announced on Wednesday that 85 percent of the violent fires that devastated the east of the country were now under control. But for many animals, devoured by the flames, it is already too late.
In the Otuquis Nature Park, a reserve of over 9,000 km2 in the Bolivian Pantanal region (east), on the borders of Brazil and Paraguay, the lush nature of this wetland area, known for its extraordinary biodiversity, has made place to a spectacle of desolation.
More than 160,000 hectares have been reduced to ashes, taking an entire ecosystem.
Burnt trunks as far as the eye can see, blackened earth, and on the ground corpses of mammals, reptiles, shells of giant snails burned by the flames.
"It was a disaster, we had come a few days ago when there were no fires, nature was alive, there were animals, plants ... Now, seeing that all this is devastated gives me a sadness, a great sadness, "says Humberto Meilino, a volunteer who came to help park officials.
A few birds fly between the branches of charred shrubs, but the flames have frozen.
Roberto Pais, a Uruguayan veterinarian who came to offer his help, said he felt a strong "anguish" inside. "All the animals I saw are dead, dead, all, all, I came as a person and I leave like someone else," he breathes.
"I have two children, a two-year-old girl and an eight-month-old baby, and I can not conceive of a world in which they do not know nature, would not benefit from the river, the trees, the animals, the I got it and I want my children to have it too, "explains Marcelo Casas, a civil servant who is also a volunteer.
On a sign, the inscription "do not make a fire" seems suddenly derisory.
© 2019 AFP