There are many places on our planet where summers are very hot and there is no rain, which causes forest fires. Unfortunately, the number of such places has been increasing recently. For example, in Spain, in the province of Girona, summer forest fires keep the whole area at bay.
“In recent years, we have been very afraid of fires in the summer,” says farmer Pau Mundo from Girona. – We work on the land, our life is in the forest. Four years ago, we were very scared when forest fires approached our area. If a forest fire has started, then the smoke will definitely pull on our farm, because there are hills here. And there’s no getting away from it.”
Pau Mundo grazes two hundred goats and sheep in the nearest grove. The Mundo family lives in a dry rural area surrounded by forest, where there is no rain in summer and infernal heat reigns. Such weather has become commonplace everywhere in recent years. In summer, the scorching sun burns Europe. Winds fan forest fires caused by drought, and dry undergrowth and shrubs along the roads keep the fire going.
And, alas, fire experts promise only an increase in the number of fires in the warm season.
Goat “fire brigade” comes to the rescue
To prevent forest fires, Spanish farmers Pau Mundo and Judith Nadal, who live in Girona, use old farming methods – using goats and sheep to destroy the undergrowth.
“Goats and sheep clear the forest of shrubs and grass and thereby help to save lives and our property from fires,” says Judith Nadal, who, like Mundo, four years ago started raising sheep and goats specifically to fight forest fires with the assistance of the Spanish Pau Costa Foundation, an independent group for the prevention of forest fires.
“We call goats firefighters because they eat undergrowth, which not only tolerates fire, but also catches fire very first,” says Oriol Vialta, a former firefighter with twenty years of experience, and now director of the Pau Costa Foundation. – And if you remove bushes with grass near houses and roads, then there will be fewer fires. Just because there won’t be anything to burn. After all, if a bush or tall grass breaks out in the forest, it is almost impossible to stop the fire.”
Last summer, firefighters carried out calculations of the start of suspected fires and manually cleared the forest of dry undergrowth, but the effectiveness of these measures was insufficient. Goats and sheep do this job faster and better. In addition, this method is cheaper, since farmers receive milk and meat from animals.
Carelessness human
Portuguese forest fire expert Antonio Goncalves said that there are many abandoned and overgrown fields and forests in the country, as young people moved from rural areas to large cities in search of work. In addition, in recent years it has become fashionable to breed fast-growing eucalyptus trees, which have very oily leaves, which also contributes to the rapid spread of fire.
“Combustible vegetation, dry shrubs and tall grass have accumulated, because no one keeps goats that eat grass and bushes,” says Goncalves, who works at the Portuguese University of Minho. – So the summer fires were a matter of time. It would have happened sooner or later anyway.”
Prospects for the future
Recently, the Lancet Planetary Health magazine published a climate scenario for the near future: “As temperatures rise as a result of climate change, by the end of this century, deaths in the European Union from weather disasters, including abnormal heat, forest fires and drought, may increase by 50 times.”
“With human-caused climate change on Earth, the danger of fires will only increase,” says fire safety expert David Karolyi from the University of Melbourne in Australia. – Arid countries with shrub and forest vegetation are a special problem in the future. Not only do we have more intense and frequent fires in Australia than in Europe, but the fire season now lasts longer – and all this is due to climate change,” says Karoli.
“Extreme fires that were once very rare, such as Black Saturday in 2009, which killed 173 Australians, will now become frequent,” says Richard Thornton, director of the Center for Collaborative Research on Natural Hazards. – It’s the same with floods, heat waves. What used to happen once in a hundred years began to happen almost every other day.”
In Europe, forest fires are still a big problem for the hot Mediterranean regions, but in the coming decades they are expected to move north – to the UK, Sweden, Latvia, Finland. Eventually, the temperature will rise in summer.
“The fires will spread further north into areas that have not traditionally suffered from fires,” says Richard Thornton. “Therefore, many countries now need to think about how to prevent this phenomenon.”
Of course, it is not easy to prevent forest fires. But the Spanish farmer Pau Mundo proved that it is possible and necessary to try to find ways to protect yourself from fire.
“I like this job – helping to prevent forest fires, because my family and I can be the first to suffer from a fire,” says the farmer. “My goats and sheep are my contribution to solving this problem.”
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