The Director of Studies and Projects of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of the Environment, Germán Alonso, and the coordinator of Ecologists in Action Theo Oberhuber, today presented the project “In every forest fire something of yours burns”.

This is an initiative developed by Ecologists in Action in collaboration with the Biodiversity Foundation that aims to reduce the number of forest fires and their economic, social and environmental impacts, from a greater active participation of society in their prevention and extinction.

Forest fires are one of the main environmental problems in our country, since in the last six years fire has destroyed almost one million hectares of vegetation cover, which represents 4% of the forest area and 2% of the country’s surface. 70% of the fires in our country occur in the northwest of the peninsula, and it is in this area where more than 60% of the burned forest area is concentrated.

The main cause of forest fires is the use of fire in certain agricultural and livestock practices, which account for 53.65% of all fires with a known cause. Specifically, the burning of agricultural remains accounts for 31.75%, and the burning of scrub to create pasture for 21.9%.

The number of forest fires has been increasing drastically since the beginning of the 80s, and although the human and economic means for their extinction have increased, the necessary measures have not been taken to prevent them from occurring. For this reason, Ecologists in Action, in collaboration with the Biodiversity Foundation, is launching a campaign to reduce the number of forest fires and their economic, social and environmental impacts, from a greater active participation of society in their prevention and extinction.

To this end, various informative and training material has been published, with the aim of raising awareness among the population closest to forest areas of the risk posed by fires, collaborating with the agricultural sector to reduce the use of fire in rural areas, and proposing alternative agricultural practices that do not entail fire risks. Training courses will also be developed for volunteers in the field of prevention and extinction.

Another of the sectors targeted by the campaign is the population residing in urban centres bordering forest areas, the so-called urban-forest interface. The urban development that has taken place in recent decades has allowed the construction of numerous housing estates immersed in forest areas, which have led to an increase in the possibility of fires, a greater risk of affecting people and property, as well as an element of distraction for the means of extinguishing that concentrate their efforts on protecting these urbanisations at the cost of temporarily abandoning the extinction of the forest fire. Faced with this situation, this project includes collaboration with local administrations in risk areas to advise them on this situation and promote the development of local emergency and self-protection plans for these urban centres.