Forest fires ravage Lebanon
Greek Wildfire Recovery Could Take Decades
3 October 2007
published by http://news.nationalgeographic.com
It will take years for Greece to recover from this summer’srecord wildfire seasonand it may not happen at all if officials don’t takesteps to protect burnt lands during the renewal processwarns the Greekchapter of the international conservation nonprofit WWF.
The group recently released an assessment detailing how years of poor forestmanagement combined with high temperatures and dry weather and created thisyear’s unprecedented tinderbox situation, which killed at least 67 people.
More than 670,000 acres (270,000 hectares) of farmland, homes, and protectedforests were charred over the summer, the European Forest Fire InformationSystem reports.
That’s twice the amount of land that was scorched in the previous record year,2000. (See a picture of the wildfires threatening the site of the ancientOlympics.)
“The amount of land burned is about 5 percent of the whole country,”said Constantinos Liarikos, conservation manager with the WWF in Athens. “Itwas huge.”
WWF says that the Greek government, which has a reputation for lax protectionpractices, must follow through on promises to replant devastated areas and keeplands free of development and livestockor risk losing the forests forever.
Decades of Recovery
Some swaths of Greek forest, like parts of the U.S. West, are fire-dependentand will regenerate quickly, Liarikos said.
Evergreen strawberry trees, along with mastic and other common shrubs,resprout following fire. These lowland plants may start regeneration within twoto three years.
And short-statured Aleppo pines release their seeds when they are exposed tofire.
But much of the damaged land will need far longer to recover.
One unusual feature of the fires this year, Liarikos said, is that theyreached unusually high elevationsup to 4,900 feet (1,500 meters).
Gavriil Xanthopoulos, a forest-fire researcher at the Institute ofMediterranean Forest Ecosystems and Forest Products Technology in Athens, agreed.
“This is not typical Mediterranean forest, and it is not easy toregenerate,” Xanthopoulos said.
Grecian firs, for example, are common in higher elevations but need adifferent tree species to thrive and provide shade before the firs will comeback, he said.
It will likely be necessary to replant the firs, along with Austrian pines,at higher elevations because they are too slow-growing, he added.
One place this is critically important, according to Xanthopoulos, is MountParnis National Park near Athens, which lost two-thirds of its trees.
“This forest has been contributing greatly to the climate of Athens,smoothing high-temperature peaks, acting as a filter of pollution, and being asource of oxygen,” he said.
It may be impossible to restore the acres of olive groves grown foragricultural purposes on the Peloponnese Peninsula, he added. Many grovescontained trees that were more than a hundred years old.
The flames also hit seven Natura 2000 sites, burning 74,000 acres (30,000hectares). This included the lands surrounding Lake Kaiafa, where most of thehuman fire fatalities lived.
Natura 2000 is a network of protected areas aimed at halting the loss ofbiodiversity in Europe.
The burned areas include habitats for several animal species, including theendangered golden jackal and red deer and several lizard and turtle species. WWFsaid it is too soon to know if the animal populations will suffer from the lossof habitat.
Call for Action
Environmentalists and academics warn that Greek forests face additionalhazards unless the government acts quickly and decisively.
Without plants to anchor the soil, for instance, burn zones are ripe forheavy erosion, flooding, and landslides if heavy rains douse the areas in thenext few years. This is particularly true in the higher elevation burn zones.
Xanthopoulos said it is critical that livestock is kept off the charred areasduring the renewal process.
“If livestock is introduced in these sites, they can really destroynatural regeneration to the point of changing the vegetation type,”Xanthopoulos said.
The best way to do this is to subsidize feed for shepherds, he added.
Precisely how Greek authorities plan to manage the deforested lands remainsto be seen.
The government has announced plans to replant in the burn zones.
But environmental groups like WWF are skeptical.
Based on the fact that towns have sprung up amidst the ashes of forestsburned in the past, Liarikos said, there is good reason for the pessimism.
“That is the usual rhetoric in the country, and it almost never happens,”said Liarikos, adding that Greek law does not prevent development even inprotected forests.
“Fire always forces land-use changes,” he said. “After everyfire, a certain part of burned areas are always developed.”
Arson has even been used in the past in Greece to force land-use changes.
In an effort to prevent total destruction of these wild places, WWF Greecehas formed a legal team of “environmental advocates” to monitorpossible land encroachment cases.
“The future of these areas presents a major challenge for us all,”said Demetres Karavellas, CEO of WWF Greece. “Negative land-use changes andill-conceived rehabilitation could mean total destruction for these sites.”
