Author: Sébastian Seibt

As France battles wildfires, experts call for a rethink of forest management

Source(s): France 24

France’s battle to contain ferocious wildfires in the southwestern Gironde region entered a second week on Tuesday, with more than 19,000 hectares of pine forest already reduced to ashes. While the ecological and economic damage is immense, some conservationists see the fires as an opportunity to adapt Europe’s largest artificial forest to the challenges of global warming.

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The vegetation that grows back naturally is likely to be of a more Mediterranean type, Filippi added, resulting in a landscape similar to the scrubland of southeastern France, “which provides less cover, evaporates less water and therefore also produces less freshness”.

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Inevitably, the loss of thousands of pine trees will carry an economic cost for the many industries that rely on the Landes’ sprawling forest land. Covering one million hectares, the forest is vital to the paper, carpentry and chemical sectors and is also used by energy firms for the development of biomass.

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According to Lenoir, the fires raging in Gironde have exposed a key weakness of artificial pine forests, “a monoculture that was decided at a time (in the 1970s) when the issue of global warming was absent from debates”.

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Hazards Wildfire
Country and region France
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