The governor of Mato Grosso, Mauro Mendes (União Brasil), sent the CNN a survey prepared by the state Department of the Environment that shows that public areas had proportionally more fire outbreaks than private areas.
The study considers the period between July 1st and September 13th of this year.
The data helps to detail the fires in the state that caught the most fires this year.
According to MapBiomas, Mato Grosso accounted for 21% of the burned area in Brazil between January and August this year, with 2.3 million hectares.
“I showed Minister Rui Costa these data at the meeting. For every 100 square kilometers, fire happens more on public land than private land,” he said.
The vast majority of these lands are federal, according to the governor’s office.
The need for greater control by the federal government over federal areas in the states has been one of the points on which governors alerted the Minister of the Civil House, Rui Costa, during the meeting.
The document shows that, considering the available area and the number of fire outbreaks, settled lands recorded more fire outbreaks.
There were 6.51 hot spots per 100 square kilometers, resulting in 191 hot spots in 2,933 square kilometers.
Next come indigenous lands, with 5.22 fires per 100 square kilometers.
Then conservation units, with 4.75 hot spots per 100 square kilometers and then private properties, with 2.85 hot spots per 100 square kilometers.
Private areas
The data shows, however, that in absolute numbers, private areas burned more, as they represent the majority of the state.
There were 19,849 hot spots in 65,896 square kilometers, which means 77% of the state’s territorial surface.
When private areas are divided into two, it appears that regularized productive areas had only 1.18 hot spots per 100 square kilometers, while non-productive or irregular productive areas had 6.7 hot spots per 100 square kilometers.
The study considers that regularized productive areas are those “areas of consolidated use, as well as the authorizations provided by the Department of the Environment such as Authorization for Controlled Burning, Authorization for Restructuring of Campestrian Formations in the Pantanal, Authorization for Forest Exploitation, Authorization for Deforestation and Authorization Provisional Operation”.
Non-productive or irregular productive areas “are other private areas without any authorization from the Secretariat or areas of native vegetation without exploitation”.
A CNN contacted the Ministries of Indigenous Peoples, Environment and Agrarian Development and is awaiting feedback.
