On Aug. 28, 2022, NASA satellites picked up a small, isolated cluster of fire alerts in the southwestern corner of Bolivia’s Noel Kempff Mercado National Park. By Sept. 5, the blaze had ballooned northward, engulfing some 423 square kilometers (163 square miles) of the park’s land, according to the Chiquitano Dry Forest Observatory, an organization […]
SAN IGNACIO DE VELASCO, Bolivia On Feb. 12, 2021, Bolivian conservationists joyfully celebrated the creation of the Bajo Paraguá Municipal Protected Area. Located in the municipality of San Ignacio de Velasco in the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz, the new reserve was established to protect 983,006 hectares (2.4 million acres) of Amazonian and Chiquitano […]
Forest fires in Bolivia are showing no sign of abating, with blazes sweeping through ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest, Chaco scrubland, Chiquitanía savanna, and Pantanal wetland. With almost 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) burned to date this year, experts are warning of a repeat of the devastation of recent years. In 2019, fires tore […]