The Greek branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced on Tuesday that it had completed a project showing that controlled fires could help the Mediterranean country avoid annual forest fires fuelled by climate change.
The conservation NGO told a press conference that it had completed a two-year experiment on the island of Chios, which is often plagued by wildfires over summer.
With permission from the Greek environment ministry, WWF said that it had worked with forestry specialists, volunteers and local officials to set controlled fires on nine islands with varied vegetation from February 2022 to March 2023.
"The first results show that vegetation growth is not affected," said Evi Korakaki, a researcher at the State Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems. She added that controlled fires have, in fact, increased biodiversity and enriched the soil.
Based on the findings, WWF forest fire action coordinator Elias Tziritis said the group had prepared a draft law on controlled fires that would be submitted to the government. He stated that Greece was too focused on fire fighting and should pay more attention to fire prevention.
"Controlled fires have been practised in the rest of Europe for 20 to 30 years," he said, adding that the practice was already in place in Portugal, southern France, the Spanish region of Catalonia and Sweden.
Greece suffers waves of intense forest fires every summer. In 2021, a heatwave and forest fires killed three people and destroyed 103,000 hectares of land.
