Wildfires burn 10 percent of Argentina’s Corrientes province territory

The environmental crisis caused by droughts in Argentina’s Northeast went from bad to worse, as the months of dry weather escalated into a new complication: wildfires.

Attention turned to the province of Corrientes, which struggled to contain growing outbreaks across its territory for four weeks straight, reporting last week that more than 10 percent of its surface has been consumed by the flames: 800,000 hectares from a total of 8 million, the equivalent of 40 times the area of Buenos Aires City.

The province, which borders Brazil and Uruguay to the East and Paraguay to the North, is usually far from dry. Two of Argentina’s main water conduits, the Paraná and Paraguay rivers, converge near the provincial capital of Corrientes, while 40 percent of the province’s surface is covered by wetlands that are usually flooded at this time of the year. Most of these wetlands are in the 1.3 million hectare-large Iberá Natural Reserve.

But the historic droughts and abnormally high temperatures seen this season changed the equation.

Part of the reason behind this is the periodic appearance of La Niña, a climatic pattern in which the Pacific Ocean’s surface waters get cooler than normal, with air pressure showing below-average readings as well. This causes increased rainfall in the...