Lalo de Almeida is a documentary photographer based in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2021 his photo essay Pantanal Ablaze was awarded first place in the environment stories category at the World Press Photo contest. In 2022, he won the Eugene Smith grant in humanistic photography and World Press Photo’s long-term project award for his work Amazonian Dystopia, which documents the exploitation of the world’s largest tropical forest.
I have been photographing socio-environmental issues for more than 30 years, especially in the Amazon. 2020 was no different. News of the uncontrolled fires devastating the Pantanal began to catch my attention. So, together with a fellow journalist, I decided to go and see what was happening for myself.
It was a shock when we arrived in the region. The fire was out of control and there was almost no firefighting. I had seen many fires in the Amazon, but nothing compared to this. The saddest thing was seeing the number of animals killed by the fire. Even worse were the injured, burned and orphaned animals. 2020 was a tragedy. That same year, I returned three more times to monitor the fires in the Pantanal. And since then, I have continued to return to photograph the region.
We were on our way to a farm in the rural area of Aquidauana, where firefighters and brigade members were battling a large fire. Along the route, we began to see several columns of smoke on the horizon. I stopped to photograph a small fire near the Paraíso farm. In a few minutes, driven by the wind, the fire gained strength and speed, forming a column of smoke that stretched for miles. We had to leave quickly so we wouldn’t be swallowed up by the fire.
The unbearable heat, the noise of the burning vegetation, the suffocating smoke, all covered by an orange light, is a scene I will never forget. Pure apocalypse.
BR-262, the main road that cuts through the southern part of the Pantanal, was engulfed by numerous fires in 2020. Surrounded by fire on all sides, many animals sought shelter in the waters of small ponds located along the roadside.
On the day this photo was taken, we saw dozens of marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus) in these small lagoons, a scene unthinkable in normal times. Usually shy around people, the deer seemed stunned, unresponsive to our presence, with no other option for survival.
When we arrived in the Pantanal to cover the 2020 fires for the first time, we were shocked. The hotel, which served as a base for firefighters and brigade members, was surrounded by flames and being evacuated. Despite warnings about the fire situation, there was no organised response, and the Pantanal was left to fend for itself. There were thousands of fires scattered throughout the biome.
One day, while travelling along the Transpantaneira highway, I came across a lone firefighter who was watching a wooden bridge burning without reacting. He said to me in a resigned voice: “There’s nothing more to be done here. The fire in the Pantanal will only end when it rains or when everything burns down. Whichever comes first.” And he was right. The fire only stopped when the rains came.
In August 2024, the Pantanal started burning furiously again. My idea was to reach the place where the blaze that hit the Nhecolândia region had begun. Halfway there, we started seeing the first signs of fire. The drift smoke was thickening as we drove along the sandy road, so we stopped at a retreat on Paraíso Ranch for information and to find out if we’d be able to go any further. The tall brush surrounding the house was slowly burning, but still at a safe distance.
Within minutes, though, the wind picked up and what had been just a small spot of fire was whipped into a thick wall of flames and smoke. The indraft created by the heat from the blaze was feeding it even more, sucking it forwards through the woods, destroying everything in sight. The heat, smoke, orange-tinged air, and the crackle of the burning trees generated this hellish atmosphere. Seeing a fire like that up close is a terrifying experience. That night, when I lay my head on the pillow, I couldn’t stop thinking about that scene.
The Transpantaneira highway is a park road located in the north of the Pantanal, and perhaps one of the best places in Brazil to spot wildlife. During the 2020 fires, it was common to find dead and carbonised animals on the side of the road, especially alligators, snakes and tortoises, which have more difficulty moving around.
But the saddest and most striking thing was finding the survivors. Injured or not, the animals looked like zombies, completely lost, not knowing where to go amid the smoke. Fleeing the fire or looking for a source of water amid the extreme drought, it was common to find alligators, coatis, armadillos, monkeys and deer wandering aimlessly along the road.
While photographing the fires in an isolated region of Serra do Amolar, near Corumbá, I had the opportunity to accompany the work of the Prevfogo fire brigade from Ibama, the federal environmental agency. They are the most qualified workforce for fighting forest fires in Brazil. This group, made up of farmers from the state of Piauí, had travelled thousands of kilometres by car to help fight the fires in the Pantanal.
The resilience and commitment of these men was impressive. They worked 12 hours a day, under a 40-degree sun, amid fire and smoke, risking their lives. While I could only endure a few hours of photographing in these conditions, they spent the entire day there. They are anonymous heroes. Being alongside these firefighters and watching them work was the only thing that made me feel optimistic during the 2020 fires.
In 2024, I went back to Santa Tereza. I knew that there were numerous fires burning on the ranch, but I had no idea that it would be 2020 all over again. The blaze just swept right through, and, just like before, I saw an enormous number of dead animals: tapir, monkeys, birds. I had previously thought that the 2020 fires were a freak accident.
But seeing all that again, in person, made me wonder if perhaps that was the new reality in the Pantanal. The new normal. The biome is highly resilient, but with these tragedies repeating at such short intervals, with frequent, intense wildfires fuelled by water-loss and drought, there just isn’t time for it to recover.
Worse: even with people now better prepared and more aware of what’s happening in the Pantanal, nothing has been able to contain the fires. Seeing all that up close was gut-wrenching; a reality check.
The reality of the Pantanal serves as a very instructive example of the impacts of human actions on Earth. I would like viewers of my pictures not to see it as something distant that is happening on the other side of the world. We are all connected on this planet.
Water Pantanal Fire, showcasing the work of Lalo de Almeida and Luciano Candisani, is on display at the Science Museum, London, 6 February – 31 May.
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