I have visited this topic about forest/open heathland fires, the positive externalities of private property ownership, Tragedy of the Commons and the unintended consequences of Green not-so-benign neglect before (remember those bad fires in Australia?), but here’s a reminder, given recent fires in Spain, France, Greece and my native Suffolk in the UK:
Under its Green Deal and related policies, the European Union is designating 30% of the continent as nature-protected by 2030. Goals include increasing the amount of deadwood and the density of tree cover in forests. Whatever their environmental merit, such measures increase the amount of highly flammable fuel for fires, make it easier for blazes to spread and harder to extinguish.
The EU also wants at least a third of this protected land to fall under “strict protection,” which means it will be left “essentially undisturbed from human pressures and threats,” according to European Commission guidance. It allows for some natural disaster prevention measures, but only “when such activities are compatible with the conservation objectives of the areas on the basis of a case-by-case assessment,” the guidance says.
Ranchers and farmers in Spain and France have historically managed their land to mitigate the risk of megafires. But the EU’s regulations have made it harder for small farms to survive across Europe, accelerating a rural exodus. Red tape often hinders those who remain from carrying out preventive actions like controlled burns.
The European Forest Fire Information System publishes maps and data, updated daily, on the current blazes. They show considerable overlap between the protected nature areas in Spain and France and the wildfires. That suggests in addition to the vagaries of weather, a policy failure.
Blaming climate change is the default explanation these days for any natural disaster, but Europe’s costly solutions will make little difference to global temperatures. Better forest management and fire prevention can make a difference, however. And they would reduce the CO2 emissions from fires that now overwhelm much of the reduction from electric vehicles or other climate nostrums.
Some advocates of “rewilding” claim that fires are part of nature, and that over time, fires will trigger a response in the form, for example, of more fire-resistant species (also, certain seeds are only germinated once a fire has happened). That sounds plausible, but the problem is that in a densely populated part of the world, such as the UK southeast, people want the loveliness of nature but without a raging fire nearby, however “natural” that is. And it is worth remembering that even if you take out the Man-made global warming argument and accept that fires are part of nature – they are – that much of our visually attractive landscape is not the result of Man leaving nature alone, but of crafting and caring for it. (This all makes sense once, like good students of Aristotle, we recognise that Man is as much part of nature as a beetle, shark or buzzard).
In the meantime, I am doing the very non-atheist thing and praying for rain.
I saw a billboard in Idaho recently, “Log it, graze it, or burn it”. I didn’t understand it at first but now I do: these are the options. Nothing else. So make a choice.
Our forests will never again be wild so they must be managed. And for a long time now, in the US, they have been managed by “experts”…and so we burn every summer. Almost the entire Western US is covered in smoke at the moment. AZ and NM are ok for now; the Pacific Ocean beaches in OR and WA are ok, but in Eastern WA where I live…smoke.
People I know who live along the WA side of the Columbia River just upstream of Portland, say that if a big fire ever gets going in their area, it will be unstoppable and will burn all the way to Seattle. It’s the undergrowth that hasn’t been cleared in 50 years. Check out a map…that’s a LOT of acreage!
And to your post’s point, any government action going forward is likely to be exactly wrong and make things worse. It’s what government does. Every. Single. Time.
Utterly agreed JP!
I live just west of the Peak District. It is no more a natural environment than Manchester just to my north. The sheep farming land didn’t happen naturally. It was once – many, many years ago – trees. A couple of things happened (I am not chronologically ordering them):
1. Having a navy (merchant and military) meant a need for wood. I guess wood for lots of other stuff as well.
2. The pandemic (The Black Death) totally re-orientated British agriculture. Why does the Lord Speaker sit on a wool sack?
Those who want to conserve rural England have to appreciate that very, very little of these island’s “natural beauty” is natural. As to ownership… Well, it is beyond obvious that private owners (with a few exceptions – there are always nutters) have a vested interest in their own property in a way the “technocratic”* theocracy doesn’t.
*I hate that term. How many of these “technocrats” can even change a lightbulb? They can order you what sort of lightbulb to use but can they change one?
Nick:
I believe a lot of the “rewilding” on the moors is driven by a hatred of toffs and therefore grouse shooting. United Utilities proposed to ban shooting on their land at the behest of sundry green nutters, but I think they eventually had to back down.
Urban greens live in a fantasy world in which nature thrives when it is left alone. In reality it often turns into scrubland and then burns. But so long as their class war instincts are satisfied, that’s all that matters.
I am reminded of the old joke about a priest, freshly appointed to a rural parish, who was acquainting himself with his new flock by taking an evening walk. He stopped to engage in conversation with a householder hard at work maintaining an immaculately kept garden. “Isn’t it wonderful what one can achieve with the Lord’s help?” he asked. “Indeed,” said the man “but you should have seen it when he had the place to himself!”.
@NickM
*I hate that term. How many of these “technocrats” can even change a lightbulb? They can order you what sort of lightbulb to use but can they change one?
How many technocrats does it take to change a lightbulb? None, they have a quango on lightbulb maintenance conduct a study on the impact of light pollution, then the department of environmental protection conduct a study on the proper disposal of old lightbulbs, and then three years later hire a subcontractor at $2500 an hour to rewire the building and install green bulbs and environmentally friendly window blinds. All the office workers buy flashlights because they can’t see anymore, which leads to several discrimination lawsuits by people who have poor eyesight, which the government settles for £2 million quid each.
Which is to say it’d be cheaper to move to a new building with working lightbulbs.
In the meantime, I am doing the very non-atheist thing and praying for rain.
To which God? I might point out that with the British weather, British Gods are probably unfamiliar with fulfilling supplications for rain. You might try the plains Indians gods and do a little dance (bonus, you get your steps in). or perhaps the Gods of ancient Egypt. That seems more to be in their line of work.
I read an article about Spain. The villages there would get an allocation of a forest are near their village, to use for their needs at no charge. They would graze their livestock there, and collect deadwood for their needs (heating in winter). They would do thinning of old trees.
Alas, there are much fewer villages now, and there is nobody to bid for the use of forest lots.
Also, there are more areas designed “natural reserve” where any use or cleaning is forbidden.
Land has to be managed – “rewilding” is insane.
As for the endless regulations and costs that are destroying the rural world – they are terrible.
The European Economic Community, now the European Union, was pushed as a friend of farmers and rural life – but it has become their enemy, really part of a world-wide enemy that seeks to crush family farms and rural and village life.
They want everyone crammed into blocks of flats in cities – with every aspect of their lives controlled by government and by partner corporate bodies.
Can’t we dig up Dennis Howell? He did a pretty good job of stopping the heatwave last time.
“As to ownership… Well, it is beyond obvious that private owners (with a few exceptions – there are always nutters) have a vested interest in their own property in a way the “technocratic”* theocracy doesn’t.”
The problem is that some landowners now are fully paid up ‘rewilders’, literally in the sense the State pays them £££ to re-wild their land. So they have 2 vested interests in not taking any fire mitigation measures – ideological (many are organisations like National Trust or large charities, or are eco-nutters with lots of money) and financial (they’d lose their subsidies if they did anything against the rules of the scheme they’ve signed up to).
So you have a bit of a problem of privatization of benefits but socialisation of losses – if your neighbouring landowner is a re-wilder, and his re-wilding activities become a fire risk, and eventually a fire starts on his land but then burns yours, should the person who took the money and created the risk have to compensate their neighbours for losses?
This youtube channel looks at the British gun trade and if you view any of the stuff about shotguns, they all detail the elimination of the country estates due to 80% death duties after WW2 and the break up of those estates.
https://www.youtube.com/@ForgottenBritishGunmakers
The estates had to be actively managed to provide the shooting opportunities with sufficient “wild” conditions for the birds to thrive and survive. Once they were no longer managed, then there was no economic reason not to convert the land into large fields with monoculture crops and no room for either the game or the cover and food for them.
Now, instead of interested land owners maintaining the estates that encouraged wild life to thrive, the State sets up what are essentially museums to show people what the “natural” countryside looked like. Except they don’t …
What I learned living in California is that the “rewilding” people are some of the most clueless stupid ill-informed people you will ever meet.
Yes, that bad.
For a start they are profoundly racist. They think that before European settlers turned up the landscape was in some kind of pristine state. Treating the native tribes as little more invisible props in whatever fantasy fiction about the “ecosystem” they believe. Pretty much every landscape below the tree-line in the state is the result directly or indirectly of what the native tribes actively did over the previous 9000 years.
There is no “natural” landscape. It is all “man-made”. Usually in ways beyond the comprehension of ecos. Not the brightest of people.
Most of the landscape is fire-country. Just like in the Mediterranean countries. And local tribes / peoples for thousands of years have been setting fires to manage the landscape. It was the Sierra Club types who first started shutting down the burn tradition in the state over 100 years. And eco-crazy driven CARB and CalEPA regulations passed 20/30 years that are directly responsible for the massive wildfires now. Probably the worst wildfires in such a short period of time since the mega-drought of the 16’th century. Except there is no current mega-drought.
No one does more catastrophic damage to ecosystems and landscapes than Greens / ecos with their fairly tale fictions of “nature”. With California now the poster child for this. Sounds like Europe is next. Who to blame. That’s easy. The smug middleclass mostly Pointless People who vote for Die Grünen.
As for the UK. There is no “natural landscape”. Never was. As the first human settlement was soon after the last ice left. And all landscapes in the British Isles have gone though at least 5 to 7 successions sequences over last 10,000 years or so. So which of those succession sequences is the “natural landscape”. The answer is none.
Jim – very good comment.
Phil B – very good comment.
tfourier – very good comment.
It is a pleasure to read comments from people who know far more about an important subject than I do myself.