Rewilding is to blame for Mediterranean forest fires

Or at least, to be acccurate, rewilding is partially to blame for Mediterranean forest fires. Which is darkly amusing as that man most insistent upon rewilding, George Monbiot, is trying to tell us that it’s all about climate change.

Why? Because an increase in number & spread of wildfires was a consistent forecast by climate scientists. Like many other climate science forecasts, it has materialised with a vengeance. Current fire patterns can clearly be attributed to global heating:

The thing everyone’s thinking about now concerning wildfires is those happening around the Mediterranean currently. Sicily, Rhodes, the list goes on.

Now, we know, we’re on most lists of climate deniers (DeSmog actually has one of us so listed because we argue for a carbon tax. Go figure). George keeps telling us we’re fossil fuel apologists and all the rest.

And yet we are in fact right here. Sorry about this but really, we are.

Forest fires - more often scrub fires - are an entirely natural part of the Mediterranean ecology. Been going on for thousands of years. The major determinant for any one fire season is actually how wet the preceding winter was. Rains happen in winter, native vegetation is pretty much dried out and dying back by May. Some climate models do indeed predict more winter rain in these ecologies - so it’s possible that the climate change argument is right.

But it’s also true that summer temperatures make little difference. Dried back grasses and the like are not notably more flammable at 41oC than 40. Or even than 35. And they will be dried back - that’s just the basic pattern here, near no precipitation at all from late April-ish through to October.

To which we must add another factor, rewilding. Which, given Monbiot’s arguments, he seems to like. But which does have the effect of increasing the fire season:

The socioeconomic transformations that occurred in Portuguese society during the second half of the last century have led to a profound change in its age structure, with important repercussions in terms of sectors of activity. This in turn has led to a drastic reduction of workers in the primary sector, due to the rural exodus, a consequence of which was the abandonment of many agricultural areas and their transformation into forested areas.

In turn, the abandonment of the agricultural-forestry-pastoral activity led to an accumulation of large amounts of fuel in the forest which, when weather conditions are favorable, feed forest fires.

“Forest” here is not quite towering oaks and stands of beeches. It’s scrub more than anything. But the point stands. Portugal is a vastly richer country than it was even 30 years ago let alone 50. So, those acre farms out in the wilds where people used to scrape a peasant living are being abandoned. You can actually buy whole villages in some areas for less than the price of a flat in Southern England. A truly rural cottage in many areas is the price of a decent used car.

Because they are being abandoned. The land is rewilding as a consequence. This increases the load susceptible to going up in flames in the normal dry summer.

We’re perfectly happy to agree that climate change might be having an effect. If overheating Gaia is leading to more winter rains which increase the fire load then sure, we’ll accept that as an influence. Summer temperatures make pretty much no difference at all - because summer temperatures always do get to where unattended land might burn. But we would also insist that this is not the only effect at work here. Rewilding is a real thing here as those boonies empty out. That also increases the fire load. On this there is that academic research and we also bothered to ask our local fire brigade - anecdata perhaps but then data is simply the plural of that.

We’d also add one final point. The biggest reduction in forest fires in both Portugal and Greece came a few years back. It used to be that if the hillside went up in flames then there was automatic planning permission for - say - tourist villas. When this was changed to burnt forest being, well, just burnt forest then the number of burnt forests rather went down.

Funny that, but have we mentioned before that incentives matter?