The years 2020 and 2024 severely impacted the Brazilian Pantanal with devastating fires, underscoring the urgent need for improved prevention measures. In Serra do Amolar, one of the most pristine and biodiverse areas of the biome, monitoring cameras now help detect early signs of fire, enabling a faster response to prevent large-scale damage.
"The system is quite agile. We can detect fires within three minutes, and using a map, we locate the area and contact the responsible person," explains technology analyst Igor Pinho Souza. He added that in some cases, local landowners are alerted and can mobilize a team of workers to extinguish the fire before it spreads. "Since detection is quick, sometimes the fire is small, having just started, so it's easy to control," he said. Before the camera system was in place, fire response times could take up to three hours, by which time significant vegetation was often destroyed.
This initiative is part of a conservation program led by the Instituto Homem Pantaneiro (IHP), a civil society organization focused on research and conservation projects in Serra do Amolar. Five monitoring devices have been installed on hilltops, each with 360-degree rotation capabilities, covering an area of 400,000 hectares — about three times the size of the city of São Paulo. The cameras transmit real-time images to a control center in Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul.
The software is trained with thousands of real fire images, allowing its algorithm to detect even the smallest signs of smoke and immediately notify the operators.
In 2020, 26% of the Pantanal, including Serra do Amolar, was destroyed by the worst fires in the biome's history.