After LA, fire crisis reaches Latin America — from Mexico to Argentina

As the effects of climate change become increasingly evident, Latin American countries are facing complex circumstances when it comes to defending themselves against forest fires — and urban fires.In Argentinian Patagonia, fires have destroyed more than 10,100 hectares (24,958 acres) of native forests, including areas of Nahuel Huapi National Park. There are also active fires in Chile that have killed three firefighters.Mongabay Latam talked to specialists in order to understand what is happening in some of the territories that have been hit hardest by the fires.Experts agree that it is urgent for Latin American governments, which often have limited capacity, to double down on their prevention efforts and allocate sufficient resources to fire management strategies, taking timely action against forest fires.

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As Los Angeles faced unprecedented fires razing entire neighborhoods in late January, Latin America was not spared either. In Argentinian Patagonia, fires have destroyed more than 10,100 hectares (24,958 acres) since summer began in the Southern Hemisphere. These fires affected Nahuel Huapi National Park, among other areas. In Chile, the forest fires so far in 2025 have killed three firefighters.

In less than a month, the fires in Los Angeles, since they began Jan. 7, destroyed 18,000 homes and structures and killed at least 29 people. Those were not the first large-scale wildfires to occur in this region of the U.S. What set them apart, though, was the fact that they switched from forest fires to urban fires. A similar event occurred in Chile in 2024.

In 2024, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Argentina were affected by fires that scorched forests and victimized people, even prompting some of these governments to declare national disasters.

Two fires are active in the southern part of Nahuel Huapi National Park, in the strict reserve area near Los Manzanos Lake, Nahuel Huapi National Park, Patagonia, Argentina.

How prepared is the region to face fires in 2025? Current events represent a major warning that must not be ignored. This serves as a special alert for Latin American governments, which have often limited capacity, to work toward preventing fires, allocating sufficient resources to fire management strategies and taking timely action against forest fires. The effects of climate change — such as stronger winds, elevated temperatures and prolonged droughts — are combining with human actions and intentional fires, causing wildfires with catastrophic effects.

“There is an environmental transformation in which fires spread and things become more complicated now, under the effects of climate change on a global scale,” said Enrique Jardel, a Mexican fire management specialist and professor at the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources at the University of Guadalajara.

“We’ve spent half a century discussing fire management, just like we’ve been discussing urban planning, controlling the disorganized expansion of cities and actions to mitigate climate change,” Jardel said. “Now, this is a situation in which those factors are combining and we are seeing the sad and awful example of the fires in Los Angeles, which are occurring in a densely populated region that has gone through a significant landscape transformation and which, due to the characteristics of its climate and vegetation, we can say is one of the most flammable environments in the world,” Jardel added.

The fires in Los Angeles, California, in January 2025. Image courtesy of @GovPressOffice via X.

“Of course, this is a lesson that we must learn, because similar conditions could happen in Latin America,” he said.

Mongabay Latam talked to several specialists to explain this complex situation in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia.

Argentina: A fragile fire management system

Since the beginning of 2025, Argentina has faced three large-scale forest fires in the Patagonian region. In the municipality of Epuyén in Chubut province, fire has consumed approximately 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) of forests. According to reports by several Argentinian media outlets, by Jan. 20, flames had already destroyed at least 50 homes and forced more than 200 families to evacuate the far southern part of the country.

Meanwhile, another fire that began in late December 2024 in Nahuel Huapi National Park has yet to be completely extinguished. To date, it has leveled more than 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of this forest reserve near the border with Chile. The situation is critical: The combination of dry weather, a lack of rain, strong winds and a weak government response have complicated the outcome.

Fires are active in the southern part of Nahuel Huapi National Park, in the strict reserve area near Los Manzanos Lake, Río Negro, Argentina. Image courtesy of Nahuel Huapi National Park.

“Argentina does not seem to be prepared on a provincial or national level for a climate crisis scenario that, especially in the summertime, puts Patagonian Andean forests much more at risk,” said Hernán Giardini, the forests campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Argentina.

In late January, a third fire erupted in the area. It damaged 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of native forests and pastures in Chubut province, in the rural commune of Doctor Atilio Oscar Viglione, according to Giardini.

The specialist said these fires are an example of the fragility of the country’s fire management system. “On a national scale, the resources for environmental issues as a whole have been reduced. There has been a political decision to not put much money into the environment, which will have medium-term repercussions; for example, with the firefighters who are in a fragile work situation,” Giardini explained.

Wildfires in Nahuel Huapi National Park. Image courtesy of Ángeles Cruz via Facebook.

The firefighters do not have permanent contracts, and they are understaffed in comparison with the areas they must serve. Each time a fire ignites, other groups of firefighters must be mobilized from other provinces to the affected areas.

Giardini emphasized the need for more investment in fire prevention and rapid-response infrastructure, in addition to stricter legislation to penalize intentional forest destruction. “On both a provincial and national level, prevention efforts [and] infrastructure for rapid fire response must be increased significantly,” Giardini said.

He suggested it is necessary for “the Congress of the nation to work on bills that have remained, in many cases, without progress [in terms of] penalizing the illegal destruction of forests, whether that is by converting them using deforestation or using fires. That would be another important tool to stop those who are trying to destroy the two forests illegally,” Giardini said.

Colombia: The risks of fighting the fire

Since the start of the year, in Colombia, high temperatures and the dry season have already caused fire threat alerts for 304 municipalities, mostly located in the Andean region. This is according to Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies in its Jan. 20 report. According to authorities, the country is experiencing weather with very few clouds and little rain, along with high temperatures and high levels of solar radiation. These factors have dried out the vegetation, converting it into potentially flammable material.

More than 1,000 hectares (about 2,471 acres) of forests, including teak forests, have burned in the municipality of San Onofre, in Colombia’s Sucre department, in April 2024. Image courtesy of the Military Forces of Colombia.

“Strong winds and previously deforested areas can make it so that, with dry, accumulated biomass, ready to be burned, the fire spreads rapidly,” said Rodrigo Botero, director of the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development. “As far as I know, there is not a single country in Latin America with a controlled burning system for the reduction of plant biomass,” Botero said.

According to Botero, the Colombia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD in Spanish) has shown that it has a good capacity to obtain and distribute information. Not only does the entity have a monitoring system for fires, but also for other natural risks. It is also connected to environmental institutions, territorial authorities and firefighting brigades from Colombia’s various departments and municipalities.

However, the country is facing an enormous problem when confronting larger fires. “The biggest Achilles’ heel is truly that it is still a very rudimentary [and] manual system, in which we depend on the support of the Air Force, which has some aircraft available for this purpose. This requires the development of a fire-control [aircraft] fleet that is robust, permanent and independent of the Armed Forces,” Botero said.

A Colombian Aerospace Force helicopter dropping water using a Bambi Bucket to extinguish a fire in San Vicente, Antioquia, in January 2024. Image courtesy of the Colombian Aerospace Force.

During the 2024 forest fire season, the Colombian government declared a situation of disaster and calamity, which “marked a critical point for Colombia, with a significant increase in the frequency and severity of these events due to high global temperatures,” the UNGRD said in a Jan. 17 statement.

They announced they were preparing to protect fundamental areas during 2025. In particular, there will be specific response plans for the national parks that are considered vulnerable, such as El Tuparro, Salamanca Island, Cinaruco, Sumapaz and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

However, Botero emphasized that Colombia is experiencing a particularly severe problem, distinct from other countries in the region: the presence of fires in areas dominated by armed groups, which threatens the integrity of entire teams of firefighters.

“This is a country in which fires and [figurative] minefields happen simultaneously. It is extremely serious; imagine the level of risk,” Botero said. “The matter is so serious that this issue has even been addressed in negotiations and meetings to include explicit protocols to stop the hostility against personnel who attend to natural disasters, including fires. I believe that this is an extremely important global precedent,” Botero added.

Firefighters combat one of the 25 forest fires that were active in Colombia on Jan. 24, 2024. Image courtesy of UNGRD.

Botero also emphasized that, in Colombia, the crime of arson is minimized in the penal code. “There needs to be a legal categorization framework for fire management and for its classification as a crime in those cases in which premeditation, and intentional harm to natural resources and environmental services, have been proven,” Botero said.

Mexico: Fire management, a pending conversation

Records from the National Forestry Commission of Mexico indicate that, in Mexico, 2024 was one of the most devastating years for the environment. More than 1.6 million hectares (about 4 million acres) were consumed by the 8,002 fires recorded in the country’s 32 states.

According to the Mexican Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT in Spanish), in the last three years, Mexico has experienced a prolonged drought in addition to climate variation that has favored higher temperatures. The first few fires of 2025 are already occurring. In late January, 46 forest fires had been registered in seven states, destroying more than 522 hectares (1,290 acres), according to the National Meteorological Service.

Jardel, the Mexican fire management specialist, said Mexico, like many other countries around the world, has followed a policy of fire suppression, almost always reacting to the fires, mobilizing firefighters and investing in more technology, including machinery and aircraft.

Between January and November 2024, Mexico registered 7,934 fires. Image courtesy of SEMARNAT.

Although Jardel said he believes there have been advancements in firefighting capabilities, he said conversations about fire management based on ecological principles are still pending in many areas of the country.

“This is a topic that remains relegated to the background of environmental and forestry policies, which themselves are always in the background,” Jardel said. “Although there have been times during which budgets have increased, the trend in the last few years is to reduce portions of the resources applied to these questions.”

Jardel added that “simultaneously, there is a greater transformation of the landscape, more people living in contact with forested areas and climate change, and what we have seen over the last six years is that the burned area has practically tripled in relation to the average of the 30 previous years.”

The fire in the municipality of Chiquilistlán, Jalisco, May 3, 2023. Image courtesy of SEMADET Jalisco.

As larger areas tend to be affected by fires, Jardel suggested paying particularly close attention to forest management. Using ecological fire management techniques, effective fire prevention and control activities could be achieved.

“It is a social process and, of course, it involves a well-designed policy,” Jardel said. “We hope that in this [federal] administration, these issues are boosted and that they do not continue to be relegated to the background because, at the end of the day, [these issues] are depended upon for resources, for supplying water to cities and to agriculture and, of course, [for] the conservation of biodiversity, so it is a high-priority issue.”

Chile: Consequences for human life

In late January, there were 74 fires in Chile, of which 11 were still active, 29 contained and 34 extinguished, said Estefanía González, the deputy campaign director for Greenpeace Chile, in an interview with Mongabay Latam. Three private firefighters, working for the company Servicios Forestales Nacimiento, have lost their lives in the efforts to control the fires. Their deaths occurred in the Araucanía region on Sunday, Jan. 19.

“The situation has been pretty complex, especially in the central and south-central area of the country, which is the most affected now and also historically,” González said. “Some of the most complex fires are occurring in the Araucanía region in the Los Sauces commune, with more than 400 hectares [988 acres] burned, and in the metropolitan region, in the El Canelo area, with more than 100 hectares [247 acres] affected,” González added.

In 2024, Chile experienced one of its most violent fires, in Valparaíso. Image courtesy of the Valparaíso Fire Department (@CBV1851).

The fire season could last until April or May, so it is still early to take stock [of the situation], González said, which is why the focus should be on urban-rural interface zones and on any areas planted with pine and eucalyptus trees, which are highly combustible.

“We hope that the prevention efforts work, that there is a rapid response to the fires and that all the resources will be made available to fight the hotspots that arise,” González said.

Bolivia: In the heat of the emergency

Marlene Quintanilla, forest engineer and director of investigation and knowledge management for the Friends of Nature Foundation, said the fires in Bolivia burn in such an uncontrolled manner that each year is fiercer than the year prior. “The year 2024 was catastrophic,” she added.

“Ten million hectares [24.7 million acres] have burned, [and] a very significant portion [of the fires] have occurred in forests and in areas that, in prior years, we did not identify [as areas] that could burn; even the transitional zones of the Amazon have been destroyed by fire,” she said.

Bolivia lost more than 10 million hectares (about 24.7 million acres) of forest in 2024 due to fires. Image courtesy of the government of Santa Cruz.

This situation even forced the Bolivian government to declare a “national disaster” in September 2024, aiming to channel international aid and the transfer of economic resources to the most-affected regions. These recent events act as an alert with respect to the year that has just begun, according to Quintanilla.

“There has been very slight progress in terms of planning how we are going to confront another year of fires; everything is in the heat of the emergency, and this is something that would be welcome to change in the country,” Quintanilla said. “Evidently, this year in particular has more challenges and the country’s economic context is also in a difficult condition and distinct from that of three years ago, when we had an economic condition in which resources could be allocated. This year is more economically complex for the country,” Quintanilla said.

Given the lack of resources, the best thing is to strengthen preventive measures. “From the political [side], we have to protect more ecosystems and more forests because those are what mitigate the effects of climate change,” Quintanilla said.

Bolivia also endured catastrophic fires in 2024. Image courtesy of the Bolivian Ministry of Defense.

In addition, it is also urgent to strengthen regulatory frameworks and laws in order to sanction, in an exemplary way, fires caused by humans. “There are not really any exemplary sanctions to diminish this pressure,” Quintanilla said. For as long as this does not improve, she added, there will continue to be people who use fire to seize and clear land, with fires that burn not only in the place they intend to burn, but that will spread with the winds and temperature shifts caused by climate change.

“In Bolivia, we do not have the necessary preparation or the economy to attend to these mega-fires that have occurred with the previous management,” Quintanilla said. “Working on prevention would be the most important issue, and the regulatory framework is key to this.”

Banner image: A forest fire in Epuyén, in Argentina’s Chubut province, destroyed thousands of hectares of crops, native forests and pastures. The fire burned several homes and a school, and there were dozens of evacuees. The fire began due to human causes. Image courtesy of Greenpeace Argentina.

This story was first published here in Spanish on Jan. 22, 2025.