Massive wildfires raging in drought-stricken southern Chile have wiped out hundreds of plant species, and are now threatening animal life as well, officials said on Saturday.
“We are witnessing a massive environmental catastrophe” in southern Chile, Accion Ecologica chief Luis Mariano Rendon said from Mexico. “There have been whole species lost, such as the Araucaria araucana [monkey puzzle tree]. They are trees that take hundreds of years to reach maturity. So this is a practically irreparable loss for current generations.”
The trees, a distant relative of better known pine, are considered sacred by indigenous Mapuche people and Chile has declared them part of its unique national natural heritage.
Photo: EPA
Fires advancing for several days in the country’s south have ravaged more than 3,700 hectares of forest, and have been contained, but not put out entirely, firefighters said.
There are still 25 active fires, affecting 11,428 hectares of trees and brush, according to the Chilean National Office of Emergency of the Interior Ministry, which is known by its Spanish acronym, ONEMI.
Conguillio National Park lost 70 hectares of preserve area, but the fire there was contained by late on Saturday, Chilean National Forest Board officials said.
“Since we are talking about protected areas that have been lost, this really is something that has an impact for all of mankind, due to the invaluable nature of ecosystems,” Rendon said.
Forest fires are part of every southern hemisphere summer season in Chile.
However, “it is just embarrassing that Chile] Latin America’s wealthiest country] should be so totally defenseless,” Rendon said.
“We have plenty of F-16 fighter jets, but we don’t have enough smokejumpers and repellers,” he said, referring to aerial firefighting equipment.
Argentina is sending a team of 30 wildfire control experts, ONEMI said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS