Treinamento de brigada e doação de mudas: Aliança Apuí age em resposta a incêndios florestais
The Project will distribute over 11 thousand seedlings in the affected areas
By Henrique Saunier
Translated by Felipe Sá
Photo: Idesam/Aliança Apuí
The forest fires that hit Apuí (Amazonas) this year sparked a worldwide red alert resulting in the creation of the Aliança Apuí (Apuí Alliance, in English), a group that got together to take effective and smart actions to avoid that the burnings continue in the same proportions. In addition to equipping and training people to work in a voluntary “Fire Brigade”, the Apuí Alliance will distribute 11,500 seedling in early December focusing on areas affected by the fire.
Currently, the Apuí Alliance is coordinated by Idesam and the Municipality’s Secretariat of the Environment with the support of WeForest, WWF and FARM, all united with the same goal of controlling the burnings and fires in the region and making the data on deforestation and heat sources more transparent.
With various action lines, the Apuí Alliance has already trained around 20 people as well as purchased fire fighting supplies and equipment and carried out an educational work on fire prevention in schools and producer associations.
Aligned with this prerrogative, besides taking practical actions against the fires, the group seeks to base its work on studies and analysis of the affected areas. The last study, still unpublished, signed by Idesam’s senior research associate, Gabriel Carrero, analyzes the burnings and fires estimating the damage at Apuí’s agricultural expansion frontier.
Carrero concludes that actions to reduce burns and fires should be focused on the establishment of firebreaks around both agriculture and newly cleared forest areas. Therefore, like the work that Idesam has been developing with producers in the last 10 years, techniques that don’t involve the use o fire for the formation and maintenance of agricultural areas should be further encouraged.
For Idesam’s representative in the coordination of the Apuí Alliance, Pedro Soares, the training offered is a key part of the Alliance for the municipality to have an increasingly prepared fire fighting and prevention structure. “These activities leave a legacy for Apuí and the idea is for this group of people to be able and equipped to act in the event of heat sources and to make Apuí’s producers and society in general more aware of the right ways to manage fire. But in fact, all our activities will be to prevent future burns and to avoid the situtation we faced this year”, Soares adds.
Seedlings donation
In addition to capacity building activities with theoretical and practical classes with volunteer brigade members of Apuí, another lecture will be held in the first week of December, targeting producers from the municipality. According to Idesam’s technician in Apuí, Vanilse Constante, the Alliance will also conduct the first tests of a new water pump with brigade members trained by the project.
One of the activities carried out by Aliança Apuí in partnership with Ibama’s PrevFogo
Another scheduled activity is the distribution of 11,000 seedlings that can be planted in areas affected by the burns. Vanilse Constante explains that all seedlings come from donations due to an environmental fine applied to a local farm.
Constante highlights that all the equipment purchased by the project will be passed on to the SEMMA (Apuí’s Secretariat of the Environment) and that the brigade members will also receive training on how to properly handle the tools.
One of these volunteers is Maurício Damacena, who also knows the importance of a better prepared Brigade to handle not only fire occurrences but also other accidents in the municipality.
“The level of fire in the municipality has been very high, but a Fire Brigade would be very good not only to put out a fire, it also assists in vehicle accidents, domestic accidents, so it is something that meets other demands of our region. The course we did was great, we learned new techniques, with practical and theoretical classes, including legislation, fighting different types of fires and first aid. In the practical part we were able to have a hands-on experience and do procedures that we will use in our daily work”, says Damacena.
Currently, the municipality of Apuí doesn’t have an official fire brigade, being covered by PrevFogo, coordinated by Ibama, at some times of the year.
Leave a Reply