To an ecologist, wildfires are intrinsically interesting. Wildfires structure communities, and communities structure wildfires. Plants in fire-prone habitats have evolved interesting strategies to adapt to fire. Good examples are the serotinous cones of some pine species, which do not open until they have been cooked, and the aromatic shed leaves and bark of eucalypts.

The basic principle is that fire begets fire. Fire selects for fire-adapted species, which are more prone to burning when there is a spark. In the absence of fire, more competitive plants, without any adaptations to fire, may gradually take over. That’s why, if you kept fire away from the UK’s moors for long enough, they would become woodland. This would be far less flammable than the heather-clad hills, and would probably perpetuate.

Naturally, theory is different to practice, and most of us prefer to stay far away from wildfires. Unfortunately for the residents of the Gironde, the fire has come to them in July 2026. There has been a lot of apocalyptic language uttered about the present spate of fires, and yesterday I heard that the Macron said that this was the worst fire trouble for France since World War 2. More on the Macron in a moment.

Not much has been said about the cause of the fires near Bordeaux (two days ago: 10 miles away; yesterday: 9 miles away). So, I thought I’d have a search of the news to see what is known. Different sources give different answers (none claiming a natural origin).

A glance at Google Earth said that there was lots of pine plantation in the region. What sort of pine, I asked the AI. Maritime pine, it said, Pinus pinaster.

Well, I was a little surprised. Why? Because it’s a fire-adapted species.

Now, I can’t confirm that the majority of the plantations are Pinus pinaster, nor that the fires have occurred within pinaster plantations, not without going there and having a look. But at first sight, it seems rather risky to go about deliberately planting a fire hazard in great dense blocks. I mean, the foresters don’t want a fire to burn all their trees, they want, in due course, to harvest them.

Next I turned to Google Scholar, and found a 2006 paper on fire and Pinus pinaster by Fernandes & Rigolot.

The wildfire problem associated with maritime pine stands is especially acute in the western part of the Iberian Peninsula, at the intersection of Mediterranean and Atlantic climate influences, i.e. where summer drought and high plant productivity coexist. Here, fuels can build-up to levels which are probably unequalled by pine stands in temperate climates elsewhere (Vega, 2001). The afforestation of communal lands in the 20th century has replaced the traditional matrix of grazed shrubland and pasture with dense stands of maritime pine, often extending over thousands of hectares of rough terrain, thus allowing landscape fire propagation in the years to come in a context of increasing depopulation and poor management (Rego, 1992).

The tale of communal grazing being replaced by afforestation is something I have seen referred to only yesterday, by Miquel Vila at UnHerd.

The AI also alerted me to a site discussing some earlier fires in the same region. The Global Peatlands Initiative were writing about the 2022 “zombie” fires in the Gironde (reigniting after a lull), and bemoaning the 19th-century draining of the swamplands of south-west France, and the subsequent deployment of vast areas of pine plantation. It was a recipe for disaster.

Until 1946, when the Commissioner of Bordeaux decreed the creation of firefighting organizations (Papy, 1950), wildfires were common in the region, especially in drought years. It was hoped that improved firefighting capacity would prevent large fires, but in August 1949 a saw-mill caught on fire and the subsequent blaze burned around 50,000 hectares of Landes pine plantations. The 1949 fire was the largest in France to date and also the most deadly. Tragically, 82 people, mostly volunteer firefighters, were killed while trying to extinguish the flames (Papy, 1950).

Now back to the Macron, whose wisdom features at that GPI story.

Following the 1949 wildfire in Landes, there were calls for the pine plantations to be replanted. This was done, with the addition of a network of firebreaks, which reduced the risk of large fires. Following this year’s [2022] wildfires there were once again calls for the pine trees to be reinstated and President Macron promised this will happen.

The ashes were barely cold and they were out planting FIRE-ADAPTED pine plantations again?

It’s rather like mixing gunpowder by the light of a bonfire.

Having heard that there were significant fires in the Gironde in 2022, I went to EFFIS and their annual reports to read all about them. In south-west France in 2022,

The total number of fires was 3 066, destroying 32 908 hectares of vegetation. This last figure is marked by four major fires, which accounted for 87% of the area burned. Of these, two started within a few hours of each other on July 12 at La Teste de Buch (5 709 hectares) and Landiras (12 552 hectares).

What about the fire causes?

Only 6 312 fires, or 33% of the total, have a known cause. This percentage, higher than the 2006-2021 average of 26% of fires with a known cause, reflects progress in the search for causes. Of these fires with a known cause :

• 330 were attributed to a natural cause (lightning), i.e. 1% of all fires or 2% of fires with a known cause, which is below the average of 7% of fires with a known cause, and a far cry from the 2006 record (580 fires or 23% of known causes).

• 4 119 fires were accidental, i.e. 22% of all fires, or 67% of fires with a known cause, which is close to the average.

• 1 863 fires were of deliberate origin, i.e. 10% of all fires or 31% of fires with a known cause, which is slightly higher than the average of 27% of known causes.

So, the cause of 2% of known fires was dry lightning, and 31% was arson.

What about the Macron? Well, the fires had political consequences, as the EFFIS report lays out:

The measures do not look like a hill of beans to me. [Asterisk: the last item is the most important, but I doubt anything serious resulted.] Were they in place by 2023? Who knows. But it’s quite obvious that the Macron should have decreed that fire-adapted trees should not, on any account, be used for commercial forestry in this region. There are alternatives. Maybe the alternatives don’t grow so fast? Well, they don’t burn so fast, either.

The first image below shows the EFFIS event viewer. The present fires (last thirty days) are in orange, and the 2022 fires are outlined in pink (Bordeaux is the central black blob) (the other black blob is the Bassin d’Arcachon, with Cap Ferret the green finger to its west). The 2022 fires were not as large, but you could hardly argue that they were not of a similar scale. The wake-up call was there, but the French President did not heed it. Meanwhile, folks are demanding that we place the blame for all this on the “climate crisis”, and using it as proof that Net Zero is now compulsory. Well, only an idiot could believe that, if they had thought about it for the time it takes to eat a Raffaello.

Next, I have zoomed in towards the centre of the orange area west of Bordeaux (for some reason the damage indicators do not resize). Here you can see the sort of habitat that has burnt this time.

/message ends

The featured image is an ad from the Canadian Forestry Journal in 1917. I’ll paste it in again here, as it no doubt got clipped up top.

PS. “The Prometheus Zone” is a real thing, apparently. But it relates to that other fire-prone area of France, the one on the Mediterranean coast. I came across it in the 2022 EFFIS report, and thought it sounded kinda cool.

PPS. Further reading (thanks to John R for the tip off): Wildfires: why media coverage doesn’t always make the climate connection.