Spain’s summer of wildfires fuels calls for better forest management

By Pietro Lombardi, Aislinn Laing, Nacho Doce and Emma Pinedo

PARAFITA, Spain (Reuters) -Javier Fernandez Perez recalls how residents of his hamlet used to burn undergrowth during the winter to help prevent the sort of huge wildfires that scorched Spain’s northwestern Galicia region last summer.

With hotter and drier weather stoking larger and more destructive fires, experts and locals alike are calling for such fire breaks and other forestry management methods and incentives to urgently be implemented to avoid a repeat in years to come.

Southern Galicia was the epicentre in Spain’s worst fire season in three decades. During a record heatwave in August, wildfires killed four people, encroached on cities and towns and charred 330,000 hectares, an area twice the size of London.

“If nothi