An international conference on wildfires being held in Co Kerry has heard Ireland has “a flammable landscape” and this will have to be managed more as extended periods of drought become more normal.
Delegates from around the world have gathered in Tralee this week for the International Association of Wildland Fire’s seventh fire behavior and fuels conference.
It heard that traditional methods of controlled burning towards a so-called ‘mosaic of landscapes’ were being encouraged in Portugal and other countries, to prevent large wildfires engulfing the landscape.
A return to this form of land management was to be encouraged here too, forest engineer Ciarán Nugent said.
Delegates heard that simply leaving the landscape to re-wild would encourage, rather than prevent, fires, with some of the biggest wildfires in the UK recently occurring in re-wilded areas.
“We have some of the best growing conditions in Europe for vegetation,” said Mr Nugent, who is co-ordinating the event.
The fire which engulfed a third of the Killarney national park in April 2021 after a dry spell, the event heard, had been fueled by 30 years of untreated vegetation – particularly grasses and other material.
“We have to manage the vegetation. People in Ireland won’t accept the word fuel – they say vegetation, but to a fire it’s all fuel,” he said.
Lightning, or amenity activities with people lighting fires could not be stopped – but we can treat the vegetation,” Mr Nugent added.
This year’s wet spring meant there had been uncontrolled burning, and that vegetation would be fuel for a fire either later this year or next year whenever the next drought would arise.
“We plan for drought in Ireland now,” said Mr Nugent, who collaborates with Met Éireann on fire risk warnings. Soil moisture monitoring was now undertaken to anticipate drought periods.
Mr Nugent said that regardless of climate change, Ireland had “a flammable landscape” and it had to be managed, adding that indigenous communities’ methods from Portugal to the Arctic were being harnessed to fight the challenges brought by increasing drought and heatwave conditions.
The changes in climate were happening much more quickly – and emissions were stretching across continents, the conference heard. Smoke from the fires in Canada had crossed the Atlantic and was observed over Banna Strand in Tralee last year.
An analysis of wildfire events in Ireland through satellite and Google Earth found wildfire events to be underestimated here, said Raul Sampaio De Lima – who gave a presentation on UCC’s mapping wildfire project.
A 2015 fire in Killarney had engulfed 3,500 hectares – while official figures had estimated 1,342 hectares, Mr De Lima said.
“Vegetation is flammable in this country,” he said and as weather became drier and warmer more fires from leisure activities could be expected.
Conceição Colaço from the University of Lisbon’s School of Agriculture worked with communities after the 2017 series of deadly wildfires in Portugal.
People were traumatized and still lived in fear, she said.
“We always had wildfires and in reality we need to learn to live with them,” she said. However, fires are increasing and now occur from June to October, a wider season than previously.
Communal fire shelters were being built in remote communities difficult to access in a fire and advice on things like fire nets over chimes, cleaning gutters, not having vegetation near houses was issued.
Aging rural populations and the abandonment of farms was a problem but they were being encouraged to return to prescribed burning so there was a mix of landscapes to protect from fire.
“We need to manage the territory,” she said.
