Campos Amazonicos National Park, Brazil (CNN) An orange hue greets dusk in the Campos Amazonicos. It is then, as the sun's punishing glare ends, that the firefighters can comfortably approach the flames hurtling across the parched savanna.

For this tiny band of firefighters, there are no epic cargo planes with tons of water, or helicopter drops. Just shovels, sweat, a turbo kind of leaf blower to burn the fire out, and long, bumpy, agonizing drives in aging jeeps and ATVs, across the dust and ash.

The challenge is equal to the global stakes involved. Much of the Amazon is canopy, but parts of it -- like the National Park of the Campos Amazonicos -- are also savanna, where fires are stoked by powerful wind. Fire walks, confident and all-consuming, across vast swaths of pasture.

The tiny band of a few dozen firefighters -- based in a two-story house three hours' drive away from the nearest village -- cover an immense area, across which the green has turned to ashes at an alarming rate in the past four days.

The firefighters have helpful but anxious neighbors, the Tenharim indigenous people. The Tenharim have called this area "Mother" for centuries, but fear the raging inferno of this year and the rampant deforestation around the Amazon may soon leave them orphans.

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