After experiencing one of the worst Augusts in recent decades, where flames ravaged an area the size of Mallorca, experts believe that, however, Spain is burning below its potential if we want to avoid an even greater disaster in the future. In December 2023, a group of 18 professionals, including geologists, biologists, botanists, and forest engineers, hired by the Office of Science and Technology of the Congress of Deputies, known as Office C, published a report in which they raised the so-called "extinction paradox": "The country has a public policy of total extinction (...) The scientific community argues that this total suppression has the collateral effect of facilitating the accumulation of more fuel in a more homogeneous way, because the fires do not manage to eliminate it. Therefore, more intense fires may arise, which in turn force the authorities to invest in more extinction resources."
In Spain, the experts argued, "fire is a natural factor that has always existed and that, ecologically, contributes to the management of its forests, generating recurrent cycles of renewal and reduction of fuels." That is why they called for "standardizing prescribed burns or even allowing some fires to burn in a controlled manner."
Ecologist Rut Domènech, a specialist in forest fires at the University of California, where she leads the State Prescribed Burn Monitoring Program, believes that fires are "an opportunity to open up spaces and allow a new ecosystem to emerge from those ashes," with the particularity that "it will be adapted to these new climatic conditions."
"Fire, by itself, is a species that we have eliminated from ecosystems," Domènech explains. "Just as there are plant and animal species, there are disturbances, and if we eliminate that part, the forest lacks a piece and will not function. Without fire, all these spaces become continuous, and the amount of fuel increases. This is what we need to understand, that fire is an intrinsic element of that ecosystem and when we have completely eliminated it by extinguishing it, that is when we have started to have this problem of high-intensity fires."
Fernando Ojeda, a professor in the Biology department at the University of Cádiz, is even able to see the positive side of everything Spain has experienced in recent weeks: "Let's not think of the destruction and desolation of the natural landscape, but of ecological change and natural regeneration. Fire is not necessarily harmful to biodiversity." In statements to the Science Media Centre, he points out that ecosystems have the ability to regenerate after a fire. "It will take about 20 years to return to the situation before the fire. So what? Why rush?" he asks. "There is talk of restoring and reaching the final situation to protect biodiversity, forgetting that there are species that only live in the first years after a fire, and they are also part of the biodiversity of those ecosystems. It's like fast-forwarding the cassette player to the song we want, ignoring the rest of the songs. In science, we handle the concept of pyrodiversity, which is associated with a mosaic landscape, with areas of different ages since they suffered a fire, and different associated species. Pyrodiversity generates biodiversity."
In the same vein, forestry engineering professor Víctor Resco de Dios, one of the 18 participants in the Office C report, recalls that "fires have been on Earth for 420 million years," and that most of our species "are not only adapted to the fire regime, but they need it or benefit from it to regenerate."
Fire, along with herbivores and some microbes, "is responsible for recycling biomass in ecosystems," Resco points out. "Many of our ecosystems now have a biomass load that is no longer natural. After rural abandonment, the activity of herbivores has become anecdotal, leaving fires as the ones in charge of recycling that excess biomass."
This is where prescribed burns come in, which according to the report presented in Office C, have among their objectives the protection of isolated urban areas, habitat improvement, and the creation of strategic points for maneuvers in the face of possible future fires: "It has been observed that forest masses where fire is part of the management are more resilient to potential fires."
In Portugal, with similarities to Spain, controlled burning has been slowly introduced since the late 1990s. And in Australia, a high-risk territory, prescribed burns are already a common practice in eucalyptus forests. Studies estimate that managing with this practice up to three hectares is necessary to prevent the burning of one hectare per fire.