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(Reuters) -Winds and lightning strikes have sparked and fanned wildfires across the Pacific Northwest this week, including the largest fire currently burning in the U.S., which was rapidly expanding near the Oregon-Idaho border on Friday. The Durkee Fire near Huntington, Oregon, has scorched 600 square miles (1,600 square km), an area more than half the size of Rhode Island’s land mass, authorities said. It is threatening several towns. The blaze was set off by lightning […]
BOGOTÁ, Jan 25, 2024 (AFP) – Colombia has declared a state of emergency in two regions as dozens of forest fires burned wide swathes of the country and left the capital choking on smoke during record temperatures linked with the El Nino weather phenomenon. Colombia has already extinguished hundreds of fires this month, but 25 continue to burn, according to data from the National Disaster Risk Management Unit (UNGRD) on Wednesday. In the departments of […]
TENERIFE, Spain, Oct 6, 2023 (AFP) – Thousands of residents evacuated for two days from the Spanish island of Tenerife because of a wildfire were allowed home on Friday after firefighters gained control over the blaze, officials said. Around 120 firefighters backed by nine helicopters were battling the blaze in an area of steep ravines in the northeast of the holiday island. The wildfire, which first broke out on August 15, was declared under control […]
NAKHON NAYOK, Thailand (AFP) — Hundreds of Thai firefighters and soldiers battled a forest blaze less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Bangkok on Friday as the kingdom grapples with air pollution that has made more than 1.7 million people ill already this year. The fire has affected at least 800,000 square meters (200 acres) of forest across three hills in Nakhon Nayok province, to the northeast of the Thai capital, with two districts declared […]
by Marlowe HOOD PARIS, France (AFP) — The number of major wildfires worldwide will rise sharply in coming decades due to global warming, and governments are ill-prepared for the death and destruction such mega-blazes trail in their wake, the UN warned Wednesday. Even the most ambitious efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions will not prevent a dramatic surge in the frequency of extreme fire conditions, a report commissioned by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded. […]
by Laurence THOMANN Agence France-Presse WAYANAD, India (AFP) – As deforestation and climate change ravage India’s UNESCO heritage-listed Western Ghats mountain range, an all-female rainforest force is battling to protect one of the area’s last enclaves of biodiversity. The region is home to at least 325 globally threatened flora, fauna, bird, amphibian, reptile and fish species but the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has ranked its outlook as a “significant concern”. But at […]
by Bernard OSSER Agence France-Presse TEREMISKI, Poland (AFP) – Stopping by a giant oak tree in Europe’s largest surviving primeval forest, environmental journalist Adam Wajrak pauses in admiration. “The trees here were born when the United States did not exist yet, when electricity had not been invented,” said the journalist, who moved to a village in the vast Bialowieza forest 25 years ago. “It’s shocking that we protect historical monuments that are 400 years old […]
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP) — The European Union on Thursday ordered Poland to comply with a top EU court decision and implement new regulations to preserve one of the continent’s last primeval forests. The European Court of Justice in 2018 said Poland’s government broke the law by allowing logging in the Bialowieza Forest, a UNESCO world heritage site. The logging began in May 2016 and the European Commission took Poland to court arguing that it was […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Colombia lost 159,000 hectares of forest — an area the size of Brazilian megacity Sao Paulo — to deforestation in 2019, according to an official report presented on Thursday. Although considerable, it represents a 19 percent reduction in deforestation compared to the 197,000 hectares destroyed in 2018. In 2017, that figure was 219,000. “We’ve managed to control a growing trend of deforestation,” said Maria Claudia Garcia, the deputy minister for the […]
KIEV, Ukraine (AFP) — Hundreds of firefighters and rescue workers rushed to deal with a forest fire that has killed six people in eastern Ukraine, the interior minister said on Tuesday. Water-bombing planes were also sent to the scene of the blaze in the Lugansk region, which is partially under the control of pro-Russia separatists, Arsen Avakov said. Firefighters initially battled back the flames but it spread again, helped by gusts of wind and soaring […]
PEKANBARU, Indonesia (AFP) — Hundreds of people held a mass prayer for rain in a smoke-filled Indonesian city on Friday, desperately hoping that downpours will extinguish forest fires and wash away the toxic haze covering wide swathes of the country. Illegal fires to clear land for farming are raging on Indonesia’s Sumatra and Borneo islands with firefighters battling round the clock through charred forests, and water-bombing helicopters deployed to douse the flames. Dense smoke has […]
by Theo MERZ MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called in the army to fight forest fires that have been raging across vast expanses of Siberia for days, enveloping entire cities in black smoke. Environmentalists have warned that the scale of the blazes could accelerate global warming, aside from any immediate effects on the health of inhabitants. Around three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of land in the centre and east […]
