Wildfires: beliefs and prejudices versus reality
Francisco Dans del Valle
Forest Engineer, former director of the Galician Forestry Association
Reproduction of the article which, under the same title, was published in June 2014 in issue 57 of the magazine. O Monte.
The summer of 2013 was particularly hard for some AFG-affiliated community woodlands. The most significant case was that of the community woodland in common ownership of Santa Mariña do Rosal, a 1,500-hectare forest producing high-quality pine timber, well managed by the Community of Woodland Owners and employing more than fifteen people.
On the night of 23 August 2013 this mountain was devastated by a poorly controlled fire that affected more than 800 hectares and which started 5 km outside the boundaries of the community woodland.
The disaster on the Rosal community woodland was the catalyst for the AFG's Board of Directors to decide to draw up a report to gather the views of forest owners and to call for the improvements we believe should be made to control forest fires in Galicia.
This article provides a summary of the section of this report dedicated to analysing the importance of citizen participation in the prevention of wildfires.
The Report on the situation of wildfires in GaliciaThe report just published by the AFG diagnoses the problem from the perspective of Galician forest owners. We Galician silviculturists want to initiate an open debate that could lead to the formulation of a state policy shared by the main actors in the sector and the institutions involved, and supported by Galician society.
The report sets out proposals for improvement aimed at reducing the risk of wildfires and making the resources dedicated to wildfire control more efficient.
The basic results of the last 25 years
Historical data show that the annual area of woodland burnt has, since 1995, exhibited a decreasing trend in line with the increase in expenditure on firefighting resources. At the same time, the effectiveness of the firefighting services has improved markedly, as indicated by the average area burnt per wildfire, one of the lowest in the country.
The downside is the number of fires which, despite the change in trend that occurred in 2007, remains very high, always above 4,000 fires per year, and also the number of catastrophic fires (those affecting areas of over 25 hectares) which is increasing alarmingly.
Citizens' participation in fire prevention
Many experts express their concern about the lack of social appreciation for the forest and its resources and agree on the need for citizens to become aware of the problem in order to increase the effectiveness of prevention measures and to secure social rejection of those responsible for the fires.
First of all, it is necessary to highlight the public's lack of information about the responsibilities and competencies in fire prevention and extinguishing. The proliferation of changes in agencies, of competencies between administrations, and of contracts by different entities means that at present the body of civil servants dedicated to forest firefighting is opaque, and that the public neither values nor recognises the authority in this matter.
On the other hand, a review of political representatives' interventions in the media and the coverage of the problem in most media outlets reveals a disparity of criteria, a lack of consensus on policies, the weak presence of professionals reporting on the fires or analysing the campaigns, and, especially, the repetition of clichés in the interventions of citizens and journalists. The result is a narrative that leaves the public with the impression of an archaic and unprofessional forestry sector, under constant attack, in which the competent authorities are trapped in an endless war, having sunk vast public resources and devoted themselves to the fruitless search for supposed arsonist conspirators.
Beliefs and myths about wildfires
In this vein, it seems necessary to mention and outline the frequent topics in order to begin disseminating correct information that clarifies the situation for the citizens of Galicia.
The conspiracies, the plots and the incendiaries. Reviewing the archives, it can be observed that, depending on the era and the body making the assertion (political parties, various governments, journalistic analysts, civil associations…), the following groups, among others, have been presented as unequivocal culprits for forest fires:
- Conspirators who charter planes with incendiary devices
- The timber industry.
- Timber buyers, lumbermen.
- Construction entrepreneurs.
- Political plots of destabilisation.
- Fire service personnel.
- Manufacturers of firefighting materials and equipment and companies that hire aerial firefighting assets (the fire economy).
Statistical data from over 25 years, police investigations, the various parliamentary commissions of inquiry and, conclusively, the court proceedings that have taken place in recent years and the studies by the Superior Public Prosecutor's Office of Galicia, all debunk these theories based on beliefs that have for years concealed a much closer, more local reality. The evidence centres the focus of the fires' causality on archaic customs in deprived areas, on the negligence associated with using fire as a working tool, pockets of ignorance, the absence of a forestry culture and, of course, local interests for profit with agricultural or livestock uses directly opposed to the territory's use for forestry.
Phytoplankton species: the good and the bad trees. There is a school of thought that systematically emphasises the association between the proliferation of pyrophytic species – pines and eucalypts (the most abundant species in the Galician countryside) – and the occurrence of wildfires, establishing the notion of good trees and bad trees. However, the reality is that:
- The scientific term itself, pyrophytic, is being confused, which does not mean that these species burn more readily or encourage fire. Pyrophytism indicates the ability of certain plant species to defend themselves against fire and to achieve their natural regeneration in areas prone to fire, such as the Mediterranean region.
- In the northern part of Galicia, where the largest areas of eucalyptus are concentrated, fires are practically non-existent.
- The most affected Galician forest areas in terms of land area burnt by fires are the large areas of scrubland without trees.
- Pines and, above all, eucalyptus trees currently sustain the entire Galician forestry sector economy, supply the raw material for the timber industry and provide employment for more than 20,000 people, especially in rural areas.
- In Spain, in the country's most extensive pine-forest areas, located in the mountain massifs of the provinces of Soria and Burgos, wildfires are virtually non-existent.
- In the countries of our region, among those with a Mediterranean-influenced climate and most affected by fires, the region where the least woodland burns is Aquitaine, in south-western France, where the largest continuous expanse of Pine maritime (native pine), more than 1 million ha.
The smallholding. The largest forest fires, with the greatest economic and environmental damage and which systematically recur in the same regions every so often, occur in areas dominated by large-scale woodlands, with an average size of over 200 hectares per holding. These are community-owned woodlands located in the province of Ourense, in southern Lugo, in southern Pontevedra and in Barbanza in A Coruña. In contrast, the highly fragmented forest areas of northern and north-western Galicia, as well as other highly productive areas where private woodland ownership predominates, are the regions that record the fewest fires, the least damage and where statistics show the lowest average burnt area per fire in all of Galicia.
The urban citizen, like many Galician politicians, tends to associate minifundismo with abandonment, without appreciating that the reality is much more complex and diverse.
This reality has its own particularities, such as in the southern districts of Pontevedra and Ourense, where there is extreme small-scale landholding and very adverse climatic conditions in summer, combined with a greater intensity of urban-forestry interfaces. In southern Galicia, a significant number of wildfires originate in small forest plots, often abandoned or with very little silvicultural care. These plots, most of which are pine-dominated, yield no profit whatsoever; proof of this is the growing lack of knowledge among current owners about the location and boundaries of the plots.
This issue, which has not yet been addressed, would merit specific treatment, as it does not appear that the current models of forest promotion societies for the joint management of the forest have taken root in these areas.
The abandonment of the mountain. The message, systematically repeated, is that the Galician forest is abandoned. The public only perceives the negative side of a space that covers almost 2 million hectares of our territory. This perception is nothing more than one side of the forest; the other side, always marginalised, supplies 50% of the timber produced in Spain, carries out high-quality silvicultural work, provides employment for more than 20,000 people and generates an annual turnover of over 200 million euros, which is received by more than 100,000 Galician families.
Clean up the mountain. A recurring assertion that insists the solution to wildfires is to “clean up” the forest and which implies that the landowners are to blame for the problem due to a “lack of cleaning”. This is a misleading message and is very far from the reality. Firstly, because of the term itself, a forest is not cleaned but rather cleared, or its vegetation is controlled. In silvicultural terms, this is known as strategic vegetation management: a set of silvicultural operations aimed at reducing the load of combustible biomass and dividing the terrain with cleared strips. On the other hand, the “clearing” of the forest (understood as the removal of scrub) is economically unviable and, ecologically, very damaging if carried out on a large scale. Citizens must understand that the forest is a naturalised space, where scrub and its cycles fulfil very important functions in local ecosystems. Forest owners are not responsible for the problem of fires because of scrub in the forest, but are its victims.
The use of biomass for energy purposes. It is very often suggested that the energy use of scrubland solves the problem of wildfires, when in reality forest biomass as an energy source is mainly made up of the woody fraction of trees that is not used in conventional timber processing.
The use of forest biomass focuses on thin, defective timber from various species, particularly conifers. This is an activity with its full potential yet to be realised, which could become a very important source of income for Galician forest owners and, therefore, another reason to look after the woodland, reduce the excessive volume of biomass and lower the risk of forest fires.
The forest models to emulate. In the media, one of the most misguided tropes is frequently used, presenting the forestry systems of Sweden, Finland or Canada as the great paradigm and as models to be emulated, territories where the risk of wildfires is minimal due to summer rainfall and, above all, because the soils are moister and cooler and the vegetation retains more water for longer with the same amount of precipitation. It is also necessary to consider the absence of population in wooded areas and the type of ownership, most of which is public or in the hands of large industrial corporations.
The benchmark model should be sought in countries or regions similar to Galicia, such as the fire prevention and extinguishing system in the forests of the Landes, in the Aquitaine region of south-west France. This area has delivered optimal results in recent decades and has conditions and vegetation similar to Galicia, with a comparable land tenure system in which over 92.1% of the forest area is privately owned.
