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Roughly 20% of Gran Chaco's forest, the equivalent of an area the size of New York state, has been converted into farmland or grazing land since 1985, according to Landsat satellite pictures from Nasa's earth observatory.

Parts of its heavily deforested northern Gran Chaco are burning, as are the country’s eastern Paraná Delta wetlands, where fires skip from one cattle-grazing island to the next, forming gigantic walls of flame.

The main areas affected are the Gran Chaco forest that straddles Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, the Brazilian and Bolivian Amazon, the Pantanal wetlands shared by Brazil and Paraguay, and Argentina’s vast Paraná Delta wetlands.

Wildfires in the Paraguayan Gran Chaco forest have been so extensive that last weekend’s newspapers ran front-page stories with such headlines as “Paraguay burns”, “In between flames” and “Help! Somebody help us”.

The fires are also rampant in Bolivia, the land-locked nation next to Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, home to extensive areas of the Amazon and Gran Chaco forests.