See how fire has changed the world’s largest wetland, the Pantanal
A swamp deer escaping a forest fire in Poconé, Mato Grosso, in 2020
Lalo de Almeida
Science Museum
How can these four images be images of the same region? What force could possibly transform the Pantanal – a tropical wetland straddling Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, populated by jaguars, howler monkeys, caimans, swamp deer and vast numbers of fish and birds – into a fire-ravaged desert?
A sea bream in the Olho D’Água river in 2013
Luciano Candisani
This 200,000 square kilometer wetland – the largest in the world – is used to alternating dry and wet seasons. But climate change, deforestation and intensive agriculture have made a dark parody of its natural wet and dry cycles. In 2020, a record wildfire burned more than a quarter of the region’s vegetation cover. The last major fire season was in 2024.
An aerial view showing how life thrived in the main drainage channel of the Baía do Castelo, a floodplain lake, in 2018.
Luciano Candisani
The fate of this fragile ecosystem attracted the attention of two photographers, Lalo de Almeida and Luciano Candisani. Their radically different images are featured in Water Pantanal Fire, a free exhibition which opens on February 6 at the Science Museum in London and runs until the end of May.
Volunteer firefighters gathered at the Jofre Velho Ranch during the catastrophic 2020 fire.
Lalo de Almeida
Candisani’s photographs focus on the water and freshwater life of the region.
De Almeida, a documentary photographer, focused on the fires that devastated the region and how it has been affected by climate change.
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