thanks to Dwayne Knox for sending this map from the Houston Chronical. (8:46 PM 5/8/1998) check back later for story.
The News / Mexico City, May 23, 1998.Fires Threaten Las Chimalapas Rain Forest
By MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press
MEXICO CITY - Hundreds of forest fires that have caused hazy skies from Central America to the southern United States also are destroying species in important biological reserves in southern Mexico. U.S. experts are lending a hand in the fight to extinguish at least 20 fires burning out of control in the biosphere reserve of Las Chimalapas in the southern state of Oaxaca, the best-preserved and most northerly tropical forest in North America. ''There is currently a tremendous amount of damage to a very important ecosystem, unique in North America. There are going to be some areas that won't come back for decades,'' Paul Weedon of the U.S. Forest Service, who toured the Chimalapas as part of a U.S. assessment team this week, said Thursday.
Stubborn ground fires are burning through brush on the floors of forests, advancing at a rate of a quarter- to half-mile (0.40 to 0.80 kilometers) a day.''It's going to take a tremendous effort to save the area,'' Weedon said. Rare and little-studied species of insects, orchids and bromeliads - plants that grow suspended in the canopy above tropical forests - are being consumed by the fires, perhaps disappearing before they can even be named or classified, said Juan Carlos Cantu of Greenpeace Mexico.
He said the situation also was critical in the nature reserve of El Triunfo in neighboring Chiapas state.Meanwhile, professional and volunteer firefighters in the Chimalapas have struggled with little food and inadequate equipment to control three enormous blazes that are consuming the park's cloud forest, its most biologically diverse area.
''It's a feeling of sadness and impotence,'' said Miguel Garcia of the Oaxaca-based preservationist group Maderas del Pueblo, whose volunteers, like hundreds of others, have been working without a break since the fires started
May 8.
The firefighters are also endangered by poisonous tropical snakes known as Nahuyacas that the blazes have flushed out of their habitats. Foxes, tapirs and coatlis - racoon-like creatures - have been spotted fleeing the fires, but Cantu said the worst damage is being done to ''species that can't flee,'' like insects and plants.
Mexico is not the only country losing forests to the thousands of fires that have swept the region this year. Guatemala's ''sea of forest'' in the northern province of Peten near the Mexican border is threatened by vast blazes.
The U.S. Southern Command deployed four helicopters and 21 crew members to help fight those fires, which have already scorched 400,000 acres (161,880 hectares). Weedon said extremely dry conditions and deep dust and fuel layers in the region's forests have created especially smoky fires, creating a haze that has closed airports in Central America and southern Mexico and reached into the U.S. states of Texas and Florida.
Fires worse than expected, U.S expert says
By MICHELLE ORTIZ RAY
Associated Press
Relief from the smoky haze stretching from Central America to the northern United States is at least several weeks away, a U.S. Forest Service expert said. Fires burning the tropical rain forests of southern Mexico are worse than had been expected by a team of U.S. experts that arrived in Mexico a week ago. ''I didn't realize there were so many large fires burning - that the areas were so remote, so inaccessible.'' Paul Weeden, a veteran U.S. Forest Service official, told reporters Friday.
Weeden, along with another federal expert and two Texas state officials, spent three days this week in Oaxaca and Chiapas, where more than 50 large fires are burning, and met with Mexican firefighters to determine how the two countries could best coordinate efforts. A severe drought - the worst to hit Mexico in 70 years - has turned plains and normally lush rain forest into a tinderbox, allowing land-clearing fires started by farmers to run rampant.
More than 10,000 fires have burned Mexico this year. Smoke from those blazes and thousands of fires in Central America has caused hazy skies in Colorado and drifted as far as South Dakota. In Texas, the smoke was so pervasive that some residents suffered scratchy throats and watering eyes. It is taking firefighters six hours to reach some firelines on foot, he said. Once there, shovels and hand-powered water pumps are their only tools.
Weeden said 25 to 30 U.S. experts are being called into Mexico. Over the next few days, they will set up radio communications, help clear helicopter landings and base camps, and disperse equipment. Weeden said it would be a matter of ''weeks'' before the situation was under control. The incoming U.S. experts were being told to expect a 21-day assignment.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has pledged up to dlrs 5 million in firefighting aid for Mexico, and an equal amount for Central America. Infrared equipment will enable officials to locate fire sites through the thick smoke. The rain forest, an ecosystem unaccustomed to fire, has several inches (centimeters) or even feet (meters) of accumulated forest litter, called ''duff,'' that is now smoldering, Weeden said. ''They're burning in areas that haven't had a fire in 100 years,'' he said. Unfortunately, he added, ''the last long-range forecast I saw was not to expect any rain until mid-July.''
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