Wildfire management in Mediterranean-type regions: paradigm change needed

TLDR

Climate and land‑use changes have increased megafire frequency in Mediterranean‑type climate regions, while suppression‑focused policies ignore climate warming and fuel buildup. The authors contend that current wildfire management in MCRs will fail and call for reallocating resources between suppression and mitigation to address the fire problem. They propose shifting policy evaluation from area burned to avoided socio‑ecological damage and loss. This “firefighting trap” fuels accumulation, hampers suppression during extreme weather, and leads to larger, more severe fires.

Abstract

Abstract During the last decades, climate and land use changes led to an increased prevalence of megafires in Mediterranean-type climate regions (MCRs). Here, we argue that current wildfire management policies in MCRs are destined to fail. Focused on fire suppression, these policies largely ignore ongoing climate warming and landscape-scale buildup of fuels. The result is a ‘firefighting trap’ that contributes to ongoing fuel accumulation precluding suppression under extreme fire weather, and resulting in more severe and larger fires. We believe that a ‘business as usual’ approach to wildfire in MCRs will not solve the fire problem, and recommend that policy and expenditures be rebalanced between suppression and mitigation of the negative impacts of fire. This requires a paradigm shift: policy effectiveness should not be primarily measured as a function of area burned (as it usually is), but rather as a function of avoided socio-ecological damage and loss.