“In the US, we have a wildland-urban fire problem—we define it as people foolishly moving into fire-prone areas,” says Pyne.
But in Europe, he says, it’s the reverse: **”Europe has an equally large problem, but it’s because people have moved out of areas.”**
In countries like Portugal, Spain, and Greece, economic development has triggered migration into cities and away from pastoral industries, like farming and raising animals.
“That economic shift meant that there were not enough people on the landscape to maintain traditional burning or to maintain traditional land use,” says Pyne. For thousands of years, farmers regularly burned their lands to clear out dead brush and make way for new growth and to lower the risk of massive blazes.
But as in California, many modern European communities have turned to a strategy called fire suppression—meaning putting out wildfires quickly before they have a chance to spread, destroy property, and kill people. That means fuel is piling up in the countryside, ready to burn.
Because there are now fewer people living in the countryside—and also tougher conservation laws—forests have grown. While that is good for wildlife, it also adds fuel to the landscape. With fewer grazing animals to chew through grasses, that highly flammable fuel builds up even more. “So you start seeing these fires coming out, and it’s just relentless,” Pyne continues.
We do aggressive controlled burns and low intensity burns plus mechanical and hand crew removal to prevent as many fires as we can, though. Pure suppression only happens on high risk fires
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“In the US, we have a wildland-urban fire problem—we define it as people foolishly moving into fire-prone areas,” says Pyne.
But in Europe, he says, it’s the reverse: **”Europe has an equally large problem, but it’s because people have moved out of areas.”**
In countries like Portugal, Spain, and Greece, economic development has triggered migration into cities and away from pastoral industries, like farming and raising animals.
“That economic shift meant that there were not enough people on the landscape to maintain traditional burning or to maintain traditional land use,” says Pyne. For thousands of years, farmers regularly burned their lands to clear out dead brush and make way for new growth and to lower the risk of massive blazes.
But as in California, many modern European communities have turned to a strategy called fire suppression—meaning putting out wildfires quickly before they have a chance to spread, destroy property, and kill people. That means fuel is piling up in the countryside, ready to burn.
Because there are now fewer people living in the countryside—and also tougher conservation laws—forests have grown. While that is good for wildlife, it also adds fuel to the landscape. With fewer grazing animals to chew through grasses, that highly flammable fuel builds up even more. “So you start seeing these fires coming out, and it’s just relentless,” Pyne continues.
We do aggressive controlled burns and low intensity burns plus mechanical and hand crew removal to prevent as many fires as we can, though. Pure suppression only happens on high risk fires
tl;dr city dwellers are dumb