The frontier of devastation
By the Madeira river, fire engulfs homes while lakes sink into the ground.
Part of the series
CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE AMAZON
Text and photo: Vinicius Sassine and Lalo de Almeida
RONDÔNIA, SEPTEMBER 2024: The forest burns. Flames are closing in on villages, and a lake on the Madeira River in southern Amazonas has reached a critical level.
The uncontrolled fire has consumed everything within a ten-kilometer radius. One day, farmers Roberto Anacleto, 56, and Ana Bilenq, 52, returned home to find their house surrounded by flames. A hastily made firebreak stopped the spread from reaching their doorstep.
The fires never cease. Everything has been burning for weeks, and the couple cannot leave home. They need to stay home to keep the flames at bay.
About the series:
In the fall of 2024, Rainforest Foundation Norway sent investigative journalist Vinicius Sassine and award-winning photographer Lalo de Almeida to document the human and environmental costs of climate change in the Amazon Rainforest.
The stories were originally published by Brazil's largest broadsheet newspaper, Folha de São Paulo.
Poor families in Soldado da Borracha are stranded by fire. This is in stark contrast to the land grabbers who set everything ablaze to secure pastures for cattle and land possession.
The fires are only half the problem. The Madeira River, the waterway sustaining farming in the region and one of the main tributaries of the Amazon river, is gradually disappearing, creating a cascading effect on streams and lakes in the region. In places like Porto Velho and Humaitá, towns 200 km apart, the river is all but gone, and with it, the lakes. Damião da Conceição, 54, and Edilene Alves, 49, find themselves at a loss.
They live in a community at Lake Carapanatuba. In a boat with a good motor, the journey across the lake and the stream connecting it to the Madeira River takes forty minutes.
If the lake's volume drops by another few centimeters, the river will become completely impassable.
Damião and Edilene seek help for Antônio Ferreira, 74, her father who was born in a community in Carapanatuba, where he has lived all his life. In dire health, he needs urgent medical assistance.
All of them are stuck by the drought.
Riverside resident Mateus Malta navigates his canoe through the thin stream of water left in the creek, which provides access to communities around Lake Carapanatuba—Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
The Folha report, with support from Rainforest Foundation Norway, visited Esec Soldado da Borracha and Lake Carapanatuba. With distinct Amazonian landscapes, both places share common traits: the climate crisis has devastating effects on families dependent on staying in these areas. Residents are isolated due to the crisis; the Esec and lake form the same devastation frontier.
Porto Velho, Cujubim, and Humaitá are part of a region known as Amacro, planned by pro-Bolsonaro governors of Amazonas, Acre, and Rondônia as a development hub. The area comprising 32 towns in the three states has now become a frontier of deforestation in the Amazon.
Today, Amacro is one of the main hotspots of forest devastation. In 2022, it concentrated 36% of all deforestation in the Legal Amazon, a crucial factor in the regional climate crisis, where cities are shrouded in toxic smoke waves for weeks, resulting from uncontrollable fires.
Forest degradation, combined with the El Niño phenomenon, warming of the North Tropical Atlantic, and climate change, is exacting a hefty toll on Amacro.
Grain storage silos amid the smoke from wildfires on the banks of the BR-319 highway – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
The struggle is epitomized at Esec Soldado da Borracha. In 2018, the Rondônia government decided to turn the 179,000-hectare area into an ecological station. The measure was overturned by the Legislative Assembly and, in 2022, by a decree from Governor Marcos Rocha (União Brasil). The Judiciary declared the decree invalid, ensuring the creation of the conservation unit.
These actions by local Executive and Legislative bodies paved the way for uncontrolled invasion of the Esec.
Over 700 plots, connected by various dirt roads, penetrate 150 km into what was once forest.
Expansion continues unabated.
A Brazil nut tree is surrounded by fire in a deforested area in Soldado da Borracha, Rondônia – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
Among the invaders are large cattle ranchers, with over 2,000 heads in pastures still ablaze. Smallholders, who acquired a few hectares through purchase agreements—commonly known as "friendly possession"—to live off family farming, are also present.
The government of Rondônia stated that when it repealed the conservation unit's creation, it did not intend to facilitate invasion or land grabbing. “The government vehemently condemns these practices.”
The fires can be heard along the trails. The crackling, like small explosions, signifies uncontrolled
destruction, with flames slowly consuming the towering Brazil nut trees of this part of the western Amazon.
The route to Lake Carapanatuba is also one of degradation. The Madeira River, at its lowest level in the region, suffers from rampant gold mining invasion.
From Humaitá to the mouth of the stream leading to the lake, over a hundred dredges and barges from illegal mining dot the river landscape. Larger structures operate unimpeded. On sandbanks, dredgers destroyed in a Federal Police operation are stranded. The operation occurred less than 30 days before, destroying 459 dredges and barges.
A mining dredge, destroyed in a Federal Police operation, remains stranded on a beach along the Madeira River – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
The 100 km of river is covered in three hours. The water is increasingly shallow, dominated by various crocodile species, including the giant black caiman.
A caiman watches a canoe pass through the increasingly dry Carapanatuba Lake – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
A riverside resident navigates his canoe through the emptied Carapanatuba Lake, while a wooden bridge is improvised on the shore – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
Lungs and crops suffering
In the face of fire and water, the challenge is to survive until the Amazonian rainy season.
"The coffee I planted is dying in the drought. The bananas and papayas are suffering from this lack of rain. And the watermelons I planted have all died," says Roberto from Esec Soldado da Borracha.
Waves of smoke obscure the horizon. The fire crackles a few meters from the simple wood and corrugated-tin house, where there is no electricity.
The house of Roberto Anacleto and Ana Bilenq surrounded by burned vegetation after the fire that destroyed part of their farm – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
“To sleep, we have to leave everything open; otherwise, we’d suffocate,” states Ana, Roberto's wife. “The smoke is more frightening at night. Our lungs are well-battered.”
"The coffee I planted is dying in the drought. The bananas and papayas are suffering from this lack of rain. And the watermelons I planted have all died."
Four years ago, the couple bought 15 hectares in Esec Soldado da Borracha for R$26,000. They had lived in another area of Rondônia, already separated from their children, working as farmers on other people’s land. Now, they face the fire's aggression in a way they have never experienced.
“Fires don't have owners. They leap from area to area, burning everything. I made a firebreak, but whirlwinds carry the embers across the road,” Roberto says. “When there’s no smoke, it’s a healthy place. But new occupations always bring fires,” Ana adds.
A struggle for survival
Back on one of Lake Carapanatuba’s dry shores, Damião and Edilene are primarily worried about Antônio's health. She says her father is weak, not eating. His legs and feet are swollen, and he has a constant fever. Every day, as the lake and stream vanish, reality takes a more dramatic turn.
Riverside resident Antônio Ferreiras, suffering from a host of health problems, rests in his home by Carapanatuba Lake – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
Damião planned to take his father-in-law to a hospital in Humaitá in the days following the meeting with the report. To do so, he would need to transport him in a hammock to a shoreline where a boat can reach—a journey of 1 km; in floods, there’s a stream beside the houses.
Afterward, on a mattress on the boat's floor, the elderly man would be transported across the lake and stream to the mouth of the Madeira River. In an aquatic ambulance, he would complete the journey to Humaitá.
"This year, the lake is much drier. And it will get worse," says Damião. "But the canoe has to pass somehow."
From above, it's evident how the vast dryness of Carapanatuba Lake makes it increasingly impassable – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
Damião’s father-in-law worked in rubber plantations and Brazil nut harvesting. The Brazil nut groves still sustain the families of Carapanatuba, along with fishing, hunting, and manioc flour production. However, young people are mainly occupied with illegal mining activities in barges and dredges. Damião, a father of four, was also a miner from 14 years old.
Those with houses in town or another community feel it is time to leave, given the worsening crisis. Riverine families estimate that by November, severe drought will persist. Damião says his only home is in the lakeside community.
Riverside resident Damião da Conceição walks along a trail near his home in a community by the disappearing lake – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
The Amazonas government did not respond to the inquiries about drought-isolated families depending on the diminishing lake.
In Esec Soldado da Borracha, only those who have nowhere to go remain.
These are smallholder farmers who are surrounded by flames and inundated by smoke from invaders and land grabbers.
A few meters from Roberto and Ana’s plot, the fire continues consuming everything, swallowing the Brazil nut trees spared in the deforestation. A farm worker approaches the road to observe the flames' behavior on the other trail side, concerned about the flames spreading. “There are over 2,000 cattle heads here.”
The couple Wanderlei Simão and Jordelina Silva in an area burned by the fire that spread to their farm in Soldado da Borracha – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
Further ahead, Wanderlei Simão, 54, and Jordelina Silva, 47, claim ownership of just one mare, grazing as a flame can be seen and heard just meters from their backyard. The couple arrived in Soldado da Borracha eight months ago. They bought the plots two years before.
“I didn’t even know this was a reserve,” says the farmer. The fire destroyed a fence, hindered cocoa and coffee planting, and reached a meter from their doorstep.
Wanderlei went to Cujubim and filed a police report. “Nobody knows who started the fire. And if I don’t know, I won't judge my neighbor.”
To escape the smoke waves during the most critical fire points in the Esec, the couple spent three nights inside a car, a Uno. “Otherwise, we’d die suffocated,” states Jordelina.
Now, both spend days redoing the fences consumed by flames.
Wanderlei’s feet are swollen from the neverending work, and he sees no break to seek medical help.
“The chaos of forest fires has destroyed my feet," he shrugs.
A recently burned area inside the Esec Soldado da Borracha, one of the main contributors to the smoke in Rondônia – Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress.
