The European Union is expanding its toolbox of solutions for dealing with forest fires, both downstream, through ever greater coordinated responses between Member States, and upstream, to prevent these fires in the first place.
On Thursday 18 September, the European Executive Agency for Climate, Infrastructure and the Environment (CINEA) took stock of the measures being taken through the LIFE programme, the European Commission’s financial instrument for the environment and climate. The aim of these programmes is to reduce flammable vegetation through various measures.
Funded to the tune of €2.6 million over a five-year period, the LIFE Midmacc programme plans, for example, to clear undergrowth, introduce livestock and thin out forests in the regions of La Rioja, Aragon and Catalonia in Spain.
Two other techniques are being used through the LIFE project ‘Landscape fire’, which, according to CINEA, “has halved the number of fires in the project areas in Spain and Portugal by letting goats roam free to eat dry grass and scrub”. These include the introduction of additional livestock and prescribed burning, a method that reduces flammable vegetation through “carefully planned and controlled” fires. By targeting 6,140 hectares of forest, this technique has made it possible to “reverse decades of poor forest management and monoculture” in Sweden and Finland, according to CINEA, thanks to the Life2Taiga project. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)