The air shimmers with heat as the flames consume the dry grass. The sky over the endless expanse of the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the world, is shrouded in dense clouds of smoke. “I think of the many animals suffering below, and the children in the village, for whom the smoke is particularly harmful,” says Laércio Fernandes while he takes a quick break. The indigenous firefighter’s face is marked by soot, his eyes reddened. “We have to defend our environment, who else will?” Fernandes is a member of one of the many local emergency forces from the nearby villages in the indigeno…