Greece plans to light fires before the fire season, so that the fires no longer have enough vegetation to feed themselves. A conclusive experiment was conducted for two years on the Greek island of Chios.
How can we prevent thousands of hectares of forest from burning in Greece every year? In 2021, 56,000 hectares went up in smoke in ten days, three people died, and in the summer of 2022, Europe, including France, came to the support of Greek firefighters in their fight against the still devastating fires.
In order to stem the scope of these violent fires, the Greek branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has worked on a project which may seem confusing at first glance: setting off controlled fires to help the country avoid forest fires. annual forests, fueled by climate change. The principle is simple: avoid at all costs that the fire has enough to eat when it appears. According to the Greek branch of the WWF, it is therefore necessary to light controlled fires, before the fire season, that is to say before the 100 days of high danger, that is from June to September.
A pilot project was carried out for two years on Chios, an island in the Aegean Sea, close to the Turkish coast. During this experiment, supervised by forestry specialists, volunteers and local officials, 40 hectares were burned in nine sample plots, with different vegetation each time. The results are more than conclusive, according to a researcher at the State Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems.
“The controlled fires have, in fact, reduced the combustible mass, enriched the soil, without negative consequences for the flora and, which is important, increased the biodiversity”.
Evi Korakaki, researcher at the State Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystemsat franceinfo
WWF wildfire action coordinator Elias Tziritis says Greece has so far focused too much on fighting fires and not preventing them. “Prescribed burning has been practiced in the rest of Europe for 20-30 years“, recalls the researcher, in particular in Portugal, in the south of France, in Catalonia and in Sweden.
The successful experience on the island of Chios will now serve as the basis for a bill. It will soon be submitted to the Greek government.