Wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems, but climate change is making them more frequent and severe. Rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and drought are increasing the frequency, extent and intensity of fires. The carbon emissions from these fires, particularly in forests, contribute to climate change, creating a feedback loop that exacerbates the problem. The devastating impact of wildfires to humans is also clear: they threaten air quality, homes, livelihoods, and human lives.
Several of the landscapes supported by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme are in regions prone to fire, making it critical to address fire risks in their restoration plans. Dr Taylor Shaw, Conservation Scientist at the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme, explains how these projects are finding nature-based solutions to mitigate fire risks and build long-term resilience in their landscapes through innovative research and restoration interventions.
Understanding What Drives Wildfires in Europe
Since 2019, through one of our Advancing Restoration Knowledge projects, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has been leading research on wildfire drivers, using the Polesia landscape as a case study. One of the key findings of this research was that while most fires started in agricultural land, they disproportionately affected natural and semi-natural land cover types, especially protected areas. Meadows, open peatlands and primeval deciduous forests were found to be the most susceptible to burning once a fire has started, but only in low-moisture conditions. One of the primary restoration interventions in this ecosystem is rewetting drained peatlands and wetlands, an action that could drastically reduce the risk of fire in these protected, internationally important habitats.
The project developed an analytic approach that can be applied in other landscapes, and its findings have been published along with freely available code for replication (links to both publications can be found here). These scientific insights not only advance our understanding of drivers of wildfire, but also offer practical solutions for reducing fire risk in vulnerable landscapes.
Tackling Wildfires in the Greater Côa Valley
The BTO team successfully repeated their analysis in partnership with the Greater Côa Valley restoration landscape, which was recently published as a peer-reviewed journal article. The Greater Côa Valley project focuses on restoring natural processes to reduce fire risks while supporting biodiversity recovery. The BTO, in collaboration with Rewilding Portugal, examined fire patterns between 2001 and 2020, finding that scrubland is the most fire-prone habitat in the region. This validated the restoration strategy of using natural grazers — such as Sorraia horses and Tauros — to reduce the spread of scrubland, which acts as fuel for wildfires.
Moreover, the analysis showed that protected areas were less likely to burn, providing further evidence that increasing protected mature Mediterranean woodlands can help create fire-resilient landscapes. This is particularly important in a region experiencing high levels of rural depopulation and land abandonment, which has allowed scrubland and monoculture pine plantations to spread, increasing fire risk.
Rewilding Portugal is also attempting to improve grazing regimes by working with sheep and cattle farmers to modify their management practices. Improved management practices at scale will create a landscape that is more, rather than less, resilient to fires when they do occur. The study found that the probability of fire increases in areas where sheep are grazed, compared to those where cattle are grazed. This information is helping Rewilding Portugal to direct their outreach and engage with shepherds, working with them as allies to reduce fire risk in their landscape.
Rewilding Portugal plan to revisit this analysis and assess if, after their restoration interventions were implemented, the size of fires has decreased. This would provide evidence of the role that wild, rather than domestic, herbivores, can play in creating a more mosaic habitat of native woodlands and open areas through seed dispersal and a reduction of woody biomass (shrubland).
Grazing as Fire Prevention in the Iberian Highlands
The Iberian Highlands face similar challenges, where land abandonment due to rural depopulation has allowed shrubland to spread, increasing fire risks. Rewilding Spain, who are leading this project, use radio collars to track the movements of the large herbivores they have reintroduced to understand if there are areas or habitats where certain species prefer to graze. They suspect that the horses will favour open grassy areas and want to understand how this grazing behaviour may differ from that of the Tauros, who are known to prefer denser scrubland.
Importantly, they are also monitoring the impact of grazing on vegetation using exclosures – fenced areas within the landscape that the herbivores cannot access. Using this approach, Rewilding Spain will have control sites where no grazing is occurring, which they can use to assess the effect of the grazers on vegetation outside these areas. Using this data, they can more strategically reintroduce grazers in the future, knowing where each species will go, the impact they will have on the structure of vegetation and the diversity of habitats, and how this will affect fire risk overall.
Green Firebreaks in Bulgaria
In southeast Bulgaria, the Iron Curtain to Green Belt project is restoring one of Europe’s most biodiverse regions, which has been severely impacted by wildfires due to the widespread planting of non-native coniferous trees more vulnerable to fire. They have observed that fires in coniferous plantations tend to spread more rapidly, but once they reach native deciduous forests, they often stop. This is due to the higher moisture content and fire resistance of broadleaved trees like oak.
In this region fire outbreaks are typically managed through fire breaks: clear-cut strips of forests around 100 meters wide, which disrupt the availability of fuel and contain fires to smaller patches. The Iron Curtain to Green Belt project is taking a creative approach to mitigating fire through exploring the potential of under-researched green fire breaks. The Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB) is converting portions of monoculture pine forests back to a mixture of native, deciduous species. As these trees grow in the coming decades, the BSPB will be able to test if this reforestation intervention successfully functions as a green fire break. This approach will also provide habitats for wildlife, including the endangered eastern imperial eagle and Egyptian vulture, that will benefit from the diversity of vegetation in otherwise coniferous forests separated by bare strips of land.
BSPB is also testing the survival of drought-resistant oak species (Quercus frainetto and Quercus pubescens) in different planting scenarios to inform what approach will maximise the survival of planted trees in this region, with the aim of creating more drought-tolerant forests in future decades.
Building Fire Resilience Takes Time
Restoring landscapes to reduce fire risk is a long-term endeavour. Forests full of fire-resistant trees take time to grow, peatlands don’t rewet overnight, and changing livestock grazing practices is an ongoing process. However, thanks to the research and restoration efforts underway, we are beginning to see how nature-based solutions can reduce fire risk and help landscapes recover more quickly when fires do occur.
The teams involved in these projects are committed to testing these approaches at meaningful scales. Their work is generating vital evidence about how to increase fire resilience and create landscapes that can bounce back from wildfires. By working with nature, we can better protect both the environment and the people who depend on it.
