Guatemala City, April 2 (EFE). – This year, Guatemala lost at least 6,434 hectares of forest due to more than 1,200 fires recorded during the season (2023-2024) that began last November.
In Petén County, which is considered one of America's environmental lungs, 12 fires are still burning this Tuesday, according to the National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction (CONRED).
According to the same source, 48 fires were recorded within protected areas only in Petén, bordering Mexico and Belize, and 873 hectares of vegetation were lost.
The latest official report indicates that so far 1,237 fires have broken out, 924 of them forest fires, and the most affected province was Huehuetenango Province, located in the northwest of the country and on the border with Mexico, where 2,400 hectares of forest were burned.
Guatemala's President, Bernardo Arevalo, confirmed on Monday that the country is maintaining an active disaster response protocol to try to limit the negative effects of fires in the country's forests.
In the 2022-2023 season, the authorities counted more than 850 fires that affected more than 28,000 hectares of forests and pastures in the Central American country.
In the past two decades, Guatemala has lost 22.3% of its forest cover, and in that time the Central American country has gone from 4.5 million hectares of vegetation to 3.5 million, according to data from the Forest Information System (SIF). Evie
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