Vast swathes of fire-ravaged pine forest must be replanted and managed differently to avoid future blazes fuelled by global heating, French experts have said, as wildfires – several caused by arson – continued to burn across France and Spain.
Officials in the south-west Gironde département said on Monday that two huge fires – one at La Teste-de-Buch that destroyed 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of forest, and another at Landiras that ravaged 13,800 hectares – were both under control, although still burning.
“After 12 days of ferocious fighting, both fires have been mastered,” regional government official Fabienne Buccio said. She warned, however, that rising temperatures and winds meant some hotspots would inevitably flare up again.
More than 36,000 people evacuated since the start of the Gironde fires on 12 July have almost all been able to return home. However, a new blaze near Uzès in the southern Gard département had destroyed 40 hectares of land since Sunday, officials said.
In Brittany, police on Monday opened a formal investigation after declaring that two fires that have burned through nearly 2,000 hectares of heathland in the Monts d’Arrée area were both “certainly” caused by arson, with ignition points at regular 30-metre intervals.
Several wildfires – some of them also apparently started deliberately – continue to burn across Spain, meanwhile, which is estimated to have lost almost 200,000 hectares to flames so far this year.
Firefighters on the Canary island of Tenerife are battling a blaze with a 30 mile (27km) perimeter that has torn through 2,700 hectares over the past few days, with their task complicated by adverse weather conditions including very high temperatures.
On Sunday, officers from the Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, arrested a man suspected of starting three blazes. The president of Castilla y León, one of the worst affected regions, also said fires there seemed to have been set on purpose.
“I’ve just spoken to the interior minister and informed him that the hand of man is behind the three new blazes in Castilla y León,” Alfonso Fernández Mañueco tweeted on Sunday night. “I want those responsible to end up in court.”
The regional environment minister of Castilla y León – where the fires have already claimed the life of a firefighter and farmer – triggered an angry backlash on Monday after suggesting that “environmental fashions” may have contributed to the blazes.
Juan Carlos Suárez-Quiñones told Cadena Ser radio that while both the landscape and farming practices had changed, “certain new environmental fashions when it comes to clearing riverbanks and other things make it harder to clear the mountains”.
Asked whether he was saying environmentalism had aggravated the fires, the minister said: “It’s not the cause. But it is one of the things we need to work on … we’re all responsible for the forests.”
Santiago M Barajas, a member of the environmental alliance Ecologists in Action, hit back, accusing Súarez-Quiñones of seeking to evade his responsibilities.
“You’re the one whose responsibility this is minister,” he tweeted. “Blaming ecologists for your incompetence is really awful.”
The regional environment minister’s comments echoed those made the day before by Juan García-Gallardo, the far-right Vox party politician who serves as the vice-president of Castilla y León. García-Gallardo told El Diario de Burgos that “radical environmentalism and green policies have turned the countryside into a tinderbox”.
The Spanish government, however, disagreed. The interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said it was clear that “climate change plays a big part in all these tragedies and emergencies”.
Last week, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, was even blunter, saying: “Climate change kills: it kills people, as we’ve seen; it also kills our ecosystem, our biodiversity, and it also destroys the things we as a society hold dear – our houses, our businesses, our livestock.”
As thoughts turned to replanting, French forestry experts were unanimous in saying that not only the choice of species but also much tougher forest management rules would be critical in combating future wildfires amid the growing climate crisis.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, last week promised a “major national project” to rebuild and regrow the stricken southwestern region, but said it would necessarily have to be “under different rules” dictated by global heating.
Commander Alexandre Jouassard of France’s civil protection service said a top priority must be easy access for firefighters. “Every time, that’s what makes the task so much more complicated for us,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.
“Woods left abandoned, undergrowth uncleared, difficult to penetrate … that has to change.” Experts note that well-managed forests such as those of the Landes region further south, which suffered massive fires in 1949, have escaped recent blazes.
“There’s a proverb that goes, in the beginning, a fire can be extinguished with a bucket of water,” Jean-Yves Caullet, head of the French national forestry board ONF, said. “At-risk forests need well-maintained access paths, watchtowers, hydrants.”
One issue that needed urgently addressing, Caullet said, is that the tens of thousands of small private proprietors who own 75% of France’s woodland are required to clear undergrowth, brushwood and dead branch clearance only if their patch exceeds 15 hectares.
“When you realise a catastrophic fire can start on half a hectare, you see how vital it will be to encourage a much more collective approach among these small owners – many of whom are not even aware they own a patch of woodland,” he said.
Christophe Béchu, France’s green transition minister, said the government planned an intensive campaign aimed at private forest owners, noting that clearance rules were obeyed only 30-50% of the time depending on the region.
Other measures include public information campaigns, starting as early as primary school, on the significantly increased risks of forest fires, with statistics showing that about 90% are originated – either accidentally or deliberately – by humans.
Experts have also urged local authorities to counter the major risk of fires in areas of woodland and habitation, on the edge of larger forests. A 2016 study in one southern area found these account for 47% of the département’s fires, but only 15% of its area.
Finally, the choice of tree species must be paramount when replanting, which is unlikely before a full year has elapsed. New trees must obviously be suited to the southern climate, and also reflect a wider range of biodiversity, experts say.
“Monoculture is not good news,” Hélène Soubelet of the Biodiversity research foundation told Le Parisien. “We should also be thinking about natural regeneration – those species that grow back will be better adapted to a post-fire landscape.”
