As wildfires wipe out forests, Greeks debate: to replant, or not?

By Edward Mcallister
Reuters
September 19, 2024
Category: Forestry
Region: International

ATHENS – When a wildfire tore down a hillside towards Athens last month, its southernmost flank halted in a treeless area burned by fire two years before. A few miles west, however, the blaze found fresh fuel and a path towards the city’s suburbs. …The devastation is a familiar sight across the Mediterranean where increased fires are driven by climate change. … The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has highlighted the Mediterranean region as a ‘global climate hotspot’, with an increase in surface temperatures of 1.5C from pre-industrial levels. Wildfires are also a growing threat in the United States, Canada, Australia, and even the rainy United Kingdom. With that threat has come a debate about what to do with a forest once it has burned. …Some want to replant trees to restore root systems and to recover lost carbon sinks. Others say forests and fire zones do not mix.

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