Forest Fires in Mexico an Ecological ‘Tragedy’

Hundreds of firefighters, from U.S. professionals in $300 boots to Indian peasants in sandals, are battling sweeping blazes in the Mexican rain forests that experts are calling an environmental catastrophe.

While long-awaited showers have doused some fires in the past few days, others rage out of control.

The culprits for this crisis appear to be farmers, drug traffickers and others who set fires to clear land.

“This is the tragedy of the century in Mexico,” says Homero Aridjis, Mexico’s leading environmentalist. “We are losing an ecosystem that has taken thousands of years to form.”

The fires, rampaging through drought-parched fields and woods, have burned at least 1.1 million acres this year in Mexico, the government says--an area almost the size of Delaware.

The biggest concern, however, is the virgin rain forests of southern Mexico’s Oaxaca, Veracruz and Chiapas states, which are home to rare birds and plants and for which experts have no record of significant burns.

Andy Parker has fought most of the big fires in the United States during the past 25 years, from California to scenic Yellowstone National Park. But the U.S. Forest Service expert has never seen anything like the blazes roaring through Mexico’s tropical jungle.

Compared with this remote region, “Yellowstone is downtown L.A. It’s got roads,” said the burly, sweat-soaked firefighter, as he monitored dozens of blazes from a table outside a tiny concrete building in this sweltering village in Oaxaca.

Parker, one of 41 U.S. fire experts sent to help in the emergency, says the disaster has been compounded by the remote location. Some fires can only be reached by a four-day walk through the jungle, he noted. Others smolder on peaks so steep that they make the San Gabriel Mountains look like bunny slopes.

“These are steeper, as steep as a cow’s face, and covered with jungle,” said Parker, who normally works in Flagstaff, Ariz.

The firefighting effort takes in the extremes--from U.S. experts chatting on their satellite phones to Indian villagers who toot cow horns, summoning locals to wage their war.

On the front lines are hundreds of Mexican soldiers and local volunteers, many dropped by helicopter into makeshift base camps. From there, they must trudge for hours or even days through spongy, snake-filled woods to reach the sites where they are needed.

While many of the Mexican firefighters lack experience and equipment, the U.S. experts are overwhelmed by their dedication. “You see people in sandals and everyday clothing” walking miles to fight the fires, said Pat Velasco, a Forest Service manager from Payson, Ariz. “They’re heroes. They’re patriots.

“I get paid to fight fires,” he added, fingering his $90 fire-resistant pants and $300 boots. “These people have other jobs.”

The firefighters on the ground are complemented by Mexican and U.S. helicopters that are dumping water and fire-retardant foam from above. It is slow work. Sometimes the choppers can’t fly because of thick smoke. The canopy atop 100-foot trees is so dense that it can block retardant from reaching the burning forest floor. But it is the only way to fight many blazes.

“The air attack will be very strong” this week, said Pedro Martinez, a Mexican official overseeing the firefighting effort in Chiapas. Four new U.S.-provided copters were flying Wednesday to a main base, in Cintalapa, doubling the number in use.

With such help, the fires in Chiapas could be contained by Sunday, Martinez said. But that assumes the traditional rainy season kicks in--and that isn’t guaranteed.

“There’s still a lot of fire out there,” said Velasco, who also is working at the Cintalapa base. “If the monsoon pattern doesn’t set in, it’ll start up again.”

From the air, the rain forest is a patchwork of misery. Reporters on a copter carrying U.S. and Mexican officials to assess damage in the El Ocote Reserve in Chiapas on June 2 could see spindly black trunks rising like splinters from squares of charred land. In dozens of other places, smoke billowed through still-green treetops--sometimes a single plume, sometimes so many it appeared as if a filmy curtain was fluttering above the steep ridges. Other mountaintops were carpeted in still-standing brown trees singed as a fire raced through.

Experts and officials say it could take years to assess the ecological toll in El Ocote and the much larger nearby Chimalapas rain forest. “You’re talking about jungle that’s not researched. There are plants and animals that have never been identified,” Parker said. In contrast, “in Yellowstone you’ve got a battery of scientists who know every rock and stream.”

But experts agree that a catastrophe is at hand. At least 1,500 of the world’s most endangered species live in the Chimalapas rain forest. Rare howler monkeys and panthers raced from the flames; baby birds, insects and plants--from orchids to lichens--were incinerated.

In preliminary estimates, based on infrared images taken by a U.S.-supplied King Air plane, about one-sixth of the Chimalapas has been burned, said Miguel Angel Garcia of the environmental group Maderas del Pueblo (Wood of the People), which is working with the firefighters. That estimate includes 150,000 acres of rain forest and cloud forest.

As in other areas, Mexico’s problems directly affect its northern neighbor. To Americans, the most obvious impact of the fires has been throat-tickling smoke that has drifted as far north as Wisconsin.