Forest Fires: Causes and Solutions

By FRANK LINGO

Forest fires have been rising dramatically all over the world. The causes are both natural – like lightning strikes – and human-made, including from campfires, discarded cigarettes and arson.

The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) issued a comprehensive report in February 2022. Entitled “Spreading Like Wildfire,” and compiled by over 50 experts from governments and research organizations around the globe, the report outlines causes and solutions for the deadly devastating blazes.

One solution is to go back to traditional forest management practiced by indigenous peoples like Native Americans for thousands of years. They would regularly start, and contain low-level fires that would burn out the undergrowth without harming the big trees. Many of the trees actually developed fire-resistant bark that could withstand the low-level flames.

The European invasion changed land management. The White settlers clear-cut many woodlands, leaving the soil subject to erosion and flooding their wooden homes, because the trees were no longer there to absorb heavy rains.

President Teddy Roosevelt had a great idea in the early 1900s with starting the national parks to preserve nature and prevent excessive deforestation. But corrupt management meant that logging continued for decades, because the timber companies had the political clout to do as they wished.

When the massive cutting subsequently subsided, management was inclined to leave the forest as they imagined nature intended. But unfortunately, that was a formula for fires because the forest floor overgrew and became the kindling to ignite uncontrollable blazes.

Global warming has brought droughts to the American West for the last few decades, exacerbating the problem. Unlike urban conflagrations, there are rarely water sources to spray on forest fires. Firefighters feel a humbling helplessness as hundreds of square miles of trees are scorched to desolation. Then the cycle continues as all that heat and smoke adds to overheating of the Earth.

The UNEP report recommends including indigenous leaders and women in formulating risk reduction. Apparently, they tend to be wiser than White men when it comes to respecting biodiversity and other ecological values.

The report’s first recommendation is to work toward climate solutions as proposed by the Paris Agreement. So far, compliance with the accord has been erratic, at best. Next, the report states that there is a critical need to better understand the behavior of wildfires in different ecosystems. That includes the management of wildfire fuel like undergrowth, and identifying how existing practices either encourage or discourage effective response.

Another idea from UNEP is to spend money more wisely on fire preparedness. That means facing the fact that the old way of reactive suppression doesn’t work. They suggest that proactive mitigation works far better. The report says that empowering local communities is also a way to strengthen coordination of key stakeholders to prepare for, respond to and recover from wildfires.

The report notes that a 2021 fire in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland (mostly in Brazil), destroyed almost a third of that ecological treasure. Similar wildfires have devastated forests of Australia, California and even the tundra of Siberia, where over 10 million acres burned in just two years.

Loss of species can be hastened by such destruction of habitats. Unless we smarten up, humans may be one of those species threatened with extinction.

Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is a former columnist for the Kansas City Star and author of the novel “Earth Vote.” Email: lingofrank@gmail.com. See his website: Greenbeat.world

From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2023

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