Wildfires: more intense, same management failure

Wildfires: more intense, same management failures

When flames devour the mountains around Madrid, the diagnosis is always the same: fewer fires, but more virulent ones. That is what Arantza Pérez Oleaga, deputy dean of the College of Forestry Engineers, says, and the data confirm it. The vegetation accumulated through rural abandonment has become perfect fuel. What is not said as clearly is who should foot the bill.

72-75% of Spain's woodland is privately owned, and much of it is in the hands of small owners who cannot or will not manage it. Forest fragmentation is a heavy burden. On top of that come bureaucratic obstacles that prevent livestock farmers and agriculturalists from clearing woodland and riverbeds. The result is a legally untouchable landscape that burns like a torch.

This year has been the wettest in decades. Reservoirs are overflowing. Vegetation has grown like never before, and when the heatwave arrived, the countryside exploded. No climate change as the sole excuse; the problem is administrative inaction and legislation that protects so much it ends up killing the forest.

Environmentalists, who receive subsidies for conservation, stay silent while thousands of hectares burn. The administrations look the other way. And forestry engineers, many of them civil servants, also keep quiet. Together they have built an ecosystem where nobody clears, nobody cuts, and the flames settle everything.

Under these conditions, fires will not become less frequent, but more destructive. And the blame, according to the official narrative, lies with citizens who lack awareness. Or with the rain, which is really saying something.