Lalo de Almeida documents Pantanal wildfires in 2020 and again in 2024

Lalo de Almeida, a documentary photographer based in São Paulo, has been photographing the wildfires that devastated Brazil’s Pantanal in 2020 and again in 2024. His photo essay Pantanal Ablaze won first place in the environment stories category at the World Press Photo contest in 2021; in 2022 he won the Eugene Smith grant and World Press Photo’s long-term project award for other work.

De Almeida says he was shocked on arrival in 2020: the fires were out of control, there was almost no firefighting and thousands of fires were scattered across the biome. He documented large numbers of animals killed, injured and orphaned and returned three more times in 2020, continuing to return in subsequent years to monitor the region.

He describes the scenes in close detail: unbearable heat, the noise of burning vegetation, suffocating smoke and an orange light that he summarised as “Pure apocalypse.” At Paraíso ranch in Nhecolândia a small blaze whipped into a thick wall of flames in minutes; along BR-262 and the Transpantaneira highway he found animals sheltering in roadside ponds, dead and carbonised wildlife, and stunned survivors wandering amid smoke and drought.

De Almeida also photographed firefighters on the ground, including Prevfogo brigades from Piauí who travelled long distances to fight the blazes. He recorded their long days working under extreme conditions and the resigned assessment of one firefighter who said: “There’s nothing more to be done here.

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