The "cancer" of wild fires in Portugal

As this is my 1st post on Steemit, I want to reflect on a issue that happens every single year in my home country, Portugal

We just learned that the fires around "Pedrógão Grande" and "Góis" which started this past weekend (and are still burning!) have been classified as Europe's first natural firestorm! As we Portuguese people know very well, every single year we have a lot of problems with wild fires (I would say that for sure 99,9999999% of them are man-made! Every year there's been proved of that!)
A local ex-firefighter chief said he has never seen nothing like this one in 30 years of fire fighting! The proximate cause being given for the fire was a lightning strike during a thunderstorm without rain... but the real cause is no natural disaster at all. This was a 100% man-made accident waiting to happen (just as reminder, around 60+ people died, on a national road that goes trough the middle of the woods, due to this fire!)...

The forests covering this area (and almost every area in Portugal) are plantations of pine and eucalyptus. Both species have a fire ecology. In other words, they've evolved with fire and use fire to reproduce! You can't grow these trees and NOT expect fires! During drought conditions and high temperatures, these forests give off volatile oils which form an explosive mixture which only takes a spark to ignite.

Even in less incendiary conditions, these species foster a dry sclerophyllous forest ecology with equally flammable understorey. Such forests transpire much less water than broadleaved deciduous woodland. This in turn means less rain. Which in turn means a drier environment. That said, it is a vicious circle. As Ernst Götsch so succinctly said one time: "Rain must be planted!"

This photo graphically shows the difference between what happens in a forest fire to trees which have evolved to burn fast and furious and those which haven't. Study it closely! Even allowing for the possible intervention of the firefighters to save the house, it still tells a very clear story.

My final thoughts are, we need to give up the mono-culture of our forests and even our gardens, and start doing something different!

Example:
For any burned tree, plant two seeds of Hemp (it is a natural healer of any soil / livestock bedding and feed / strong construction material / natural food, medicine, body care and essential oils for us / etc, etc, etc! basically anything you can imagine can be created with Hemp! and our economy shortly would boom as a consequence!)

Or just start a Permaculture project for our forests and gardens!

With the possibility of building a Food Forest all around the World, in every piece of land available, I bet that poverty would be a problem of the past!

When there is a will, there is power! =)

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Peace! :)