Dina Boluarte

LIMA – Peruvian President Dina Boluarte on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in three regions affected by devastating forest fires that have burned through swathes of the nation’s Andean and Amazonian crop lands and left 16 dead. The heavily forested northern regions of Amazonas, San Martin and Ucayali will be under the new emergency measures, she said, following several requests from local authorities for more resources to be allocated to fight the fires. Forest fires are frequent in Peru between August and November, largely due to the burning of dry grasslands to expand agricultural frontiers and sometimes by land traffickers. Boluarte urged farming communities to stop burning grasslands as thousands of hectares have gone up in flames, while noting that the fires are also a result of the lack of rainfall caused by climate change. The president said Peru had registered 238 fires across most of its regions, and some 80% of these were “controlled”.