Bolivians Say Private Interest Groups Are Causing Record Fire Devastation in Forests

Wildfire devastation in the Bolivian Pantanal region in 2024. Courtesy of Huascar Bustillos

In the heart of the Bolivian Amazon, a record number of wildfires have burned more than 24 million acres of land so far this year, according to nongovernmental organization Tierra.

More than 45,993 fires have been recorded in the country in 2024, surpassing all previous benchmarks of deforestation since 2012, according to Global Forest Watch data.

Many Bolivians blame a federal land grant program that, with the cooperation of three unions, relocates farmers from the western part of the country to Amazonian areas, with promises of free land.

Once the farmers arrive, the program demands that they clear protected forest land to obtain the legal title.

Beyond farmers and ranchers, private interest groups involved in mining, logging, and drug trafficking also have been blamed for accelerating the rate of deforestation in Bolivia’s Amazon.

Tree cover lost to wildfires has increased dramatically since 2019, Global Forest Watch data show.

Burning forested land in Bolivia is technically illegal. However, legal loopholes allow residents to burn vast amounts of forested land with a government permit.

“There’s a law in Bolivia that prevents land clearing with fire, but once settlers get the permission from [the Authority for the Supervision and Social Control of Forests and Land (ABT)], anything they do to the land at that point is legal,” Juan Romo, an attorney in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, told The Epoch Times in a call.

Meanwhile, residents in the Amazonian departments of Santa Cruz, Beni, and Pando are suffering health consequences from the excessive smoke that has filled the country’s skies since August.

In September, Bolivia’s Ministry of Health reported 10,567 cases of residents treated for wildfire-related health complications.

The most common afflictions were dehydration and eye and respiratory problems.

“Carbon dioxide produced by the burning of grasslands and vegetation generates smoke that affects the eyes, causing a type of inflammation we call conjunctivitis,” Franz Trujillo, national coordinator for the Intercultural Community Family Health Program, said in an official statement.

“Then there are respiratory problems, since we inhale smoke and this causes inflammation such as acute pharyngitis and acute bronchitis.”

Thousands of residents have been affected by the fires, with many losing homes and farms.

Entire communities have also burned in some areas, leaving the local Amazonian indigenous people with nothing but ashes.

A fire-damaged forest in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Photo courtesy of Huascar Bustillos

The ongoing loss of biodiversity and rare fauna compounds the issue.

“It is a catastrophe that affects the lives of thousands of peasant and indigenous households, many of whom are displaced by the loss of their homes, crops, and livelihoods, as well as by the contamination of their air and water sources,” Juan Pablo Chumacero, executive director of Fundación Tierra, said in an official statement.

Fire season in Bolivia coincides with the dry season, which is when farmers and ranchers often clear their land in burn offs.

Titles and Votes

Many environmental disasters in other parts of the Amazon are firmly pegged to climate change by officials and activists.

However, in Bolivia, the expanding wildfire problem is tailored to create maximum damage in a narrow window, according to an individual who has worked with the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA).

The agency grants free plots of land up to 123 acres to any member from one of three worker unions who are willing to relocate to Beni and Santa Cruz.

The INRA source, who asked not to be named out of fear of government retaliation, told The Epoch Times that these unions lure poor farmers in the western departments with promises of free land.

At a glance, the program looks like a golden opportunity for impoverished rural residents in the west, most of whom own very little land.

However, program participants have to clear and farm the land to get the legal title.

This can take as long as 15 years because of the amount of backlogged paperwork the program is experiencing, according to the former INRA source. Until then, the government holds the title.

“In the west, people are used to 500 meters max of land for a farm. Here, in Santa Cruz, they can get 50 hectares per person for free. They just have to relocate,” he said.

Complicating this is the lack of support to clear land responsibly, the source said.

In the Amazon, large trees and heavy brush choke out much of the landscape, creating serious challenges for unprepared Andean farmers who are unused to jungle terrain.

“The people from the west don’t know how to work the land. So they just fire it to clear everything out,” the INRA insider said.

“The program won’t even give you the title unless you clear at least 50 percent of the forest from the land.”

Romo said that before getting permission to clear any land, INRA must first grant a “resolution of settlement.” This allows people who relocate to legally occupy the forested land.

The insider confirmed this and said the program grants between 30 and 50 of these permits per year.

The program began with former socialist President Evo Morales during his second term and continues today under the same political party—the Movement for Socialism—and Bolivia’s current head of state, Luis Arce.

The next step is getting “permission to clear” from ABT. After that, thousands of gallons of gasoline are dumped in the wilderness and lit without any attempt to contain or control the blaze.

One such incident happened in August when a joint ABT and police operation caught and arrested two men who had 17 barrels of gasoline in their possession in the La Chonta Forest Management Area.

Meanwhile, Bolivian officials and residents have openly accused ABT of promoting wildfires and deforestation by granting permits.

The agency has denied any “inaction” or wrongdoing and reaffirmed its “commitment and transparency in the monitoring and protection of the country’s forest resources” in a posting on its website.

In the meantime, program recruits continue arriving in Santa Cruz, hoping to capitalize on the free land that they’ve been offered. After paying dues to the worker unions that drafted them, of course.

The unions that actively recruit Andean residents into the land grant program are Interculturales, Bartolina Sisa, and the Federation of Farmers of Bolivia.

“I think this program for land is a scam. People are promised 50 hectares and they are dropped in the middle of the jungle where there’s nothing. No water, no electricity. They have to live by their own means,” the INRA source said.

“They spend years waiting for titles, they die waiting for titles. Waiting for the government to fulfill their promise.”

A Grim Reality

A former government employee and an environmental researcher say the amount of land burned this year is not just catastrophic; it’s also preventable.

As a dull gray haze envelops the city of Santa Cruz, locals dive into shops near the tree-lined plaza on Sept. 24.

It’s a park that’s normally full of families enjoying the shade, where men play chess, and children laugh.

Today, nothing but smoke from the nearby wildfires fills the plaza.

Inside a coffee shop across the street, Huascar Bustillos shakes his head and sighs.

“The worst damage from fires here in Bolivia is the loss of biodiversity,” Bustillos told The Epoch Times.

Working as a biologist with two universities in Santa Cruz and Beni departments, Bustillos has performed official surveys of wildfire damage to flora and fauna in different parts of the Amazon since 2019. He confirmed the worst destruction has occurred this year.

Wild ocelot that was unable to escape the heavy smoke and fires in Beni department, Bolivia. Photo courtesy of Huascar Bustillos

“This time, we found some areas very destroyed. Like the Chiquitania and the Pantanal,” he said.

The Pantanal, considered the world’s largest tropical wetlands, covers parts of Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay. It makes up an area larger than England and is home to more than 4,700 plant and animal species.

The Otuquis National Park is part of the greater Pantanal region in Bolivia, where Bustillos has personally recorded “very bad damage” to native plants and wildlife since his first trip in 2019.

“We lost almost everything in this area,” he said of the fire damage in Otuquis.

Bustillos witnessed similar devastation in Beni this year, not far from Beni’s capital city, Trinidad.

He also saw the human toll of the fires after meeting a community of indigenous Mojos who were forced to relocate after their village and homes were destroyed in the fires.

“The people in Monte Verde who make honey [also] lost everything this year because the bees died from the smoke. They have nothing now. It’s not just the fire, but the smoke; it affects everything,” Bustillos said.

In previous fire seasons, he said he struggled with smoke inhalation from the bad air quality in Beni.

Bustillos returned this year to carry out more surveillance of fire damage and biodiversity loss.

While in Beni, he helped rescue two orphaned ocelot kittens. Ocelots are a species of jungle cat native to the Amazon that face regular threats from deforestation.

The fact that two kittens managed to survive the fires near Trinidad this year was nothing short of miraculous, according to Bustillos.

He said Bolivia’s worsening fire season destroys more than just one generation of animals. “The fires in Beni start in the breeding season for these cats. It complicates and affects the breeding cycle,” he said.

Over time, this amounts to fewer ocelots being born each year, Bustillos said. “And that is just one species of cat,“ he said. ”Can you imagine what is happening with the rest of the fauna?”

Bustillos said many other animals, particularly sloths, suffer greatly. “The fires happen in their breeding season, too. The sloths burn and the babies die in the fires around Beni and Santa Cruz,” he said.

Local reports estimated that more than 10 million animals—including mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles—died from fires in the Chiquitania region of Santa Cruz alone in 2024.

When asked why he thinks the annual wildfires are getting worse, Bustillos said, “Our wet seasons are getting longer, but the people who start these fires wait until it is dry to burn as much land as possible.”

Bolivia’s forests, grasslands, and wetlands take a long time to recover, he said.

Grasslands, such as those in Chiquitania, will need at least 20 years to completely recover from the loss of biodiversity, Bustillos said.

In denser forested regions, it could take half a century.