Portugal trials use of goats to clear vegetation for reduction of wild fire risk
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Spain has Eucalyptus also. Curiously the private plantations burn often less than the public areas adjacent or the nature parks. Talk about weird statistics.
Without a hand that starts the fire, several times, in several places, in the middle of the night, in the most windy and dry day of the year, with devices specially designed for it... without this hand, there is not fire.
Less people wandering around in private areas than public, smoking, making campfires, or generally just throwing flammable litter around?
> Without a hand that starts the fire, several times, in several places, in the middle of the night, in the most windy and dry day of the year, with devices specially designed for it... without this hand, there is not fire.
There are also other explanations that do not require "mafias". Smokers, which many smoke inside the cars, and car/motorcycles backfires can explain many cases.
Pay attention if the fires don't start at Friday and Saturday nights near rural roads.
Like many plants native to fire-prone regions, eucalyptus trees (aka gum trees in Australia) are adapted to survive — or even thrive — in a wildfire. Fallen eucalyptus leaves create dense carpets of flammable material, and the trees' bark peels off in long streamers that drop to the ground, providing additional fuel that draws ground fires up into the leaves, creating massive, fast-spreading "crown fires" in the upper story of eucalyptus forests."
https://www.livescience.com/40583-australia-wildfires-eucaly...
That's at best baseless speculation, and one that doesn't stand to any objective scrutiny. The truth of the fact is that there was no forest fire prevention policy until the deadly Pedrógão Grande fire that left well over 60 dead, and even then the main cause was widespread abandonment of public and private property, where even municipalities failed to comply with the minimum legal obligations of clearing up their property and roadsides.
My point is that fire-resistant species would help reduce fire propagation.
Not even in "Pedrógão Grande fire", only after the fires of mid-October 2017 did the Portuguese government started to react, and by react I mean enforcing the law that has been around for 20 years.
Last years half Portugal and big chunks of Spain suffered of a big fireforest's wave in a global attack from Cadiz to the North of Spain. Fireforests started in the same weekend by what can be only called as "organised crime". We are talking about 1.485 billion in damages for Europe, 10.000 hectares burnt down intentionally and even a few people killed burnt alive. This is terrorism, in uppercase letters.
Now the area has ben cleared and the cattle has been allowed to enter again and munch the remaining tree saplings and regenerating vegetation. In this war for the public resources and territorial uses, politicians are surrendering to criminals and giving them what they wanted. Is a humongous mistake.
Two years after the crime, nobody had seen anything, everybody closed their mouths and nobody cares anymore. Ka-ching!. You had assured that the money will keep flowing
Why? Burning trees causes more trees to grow. Talk about backfiring!
In Portugal the official figures are that fires by negligence beat intentional fires, although not by a lot: in 2017, about 3000 due to negligence and 2250 were intentional (which includes things like vandalism and personal conflicts).
Source (in Portuguese): http://www2.icnf.pt/portal/florestas/dfci/Resource/doc/rel/2... (causes are listed in page 34 and 35).
There are a lot of sources but 1) will be in spanish or portuguese, 2) recopilate it for you would take me a few hours and 3) even if there is a strong suspicion about the authors, not all cases are solved. This is not new at all. Some day, somebody dies in their bed, and the forest stops burning misteriously once a year like in the last forty years.
Some recent links, all about farmers detained from starting and spreading fires in natural environments:
https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/3268868/0/detenido-ganadero...
https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/ourense/2016/12/20/det...
https://www.diariodeleon.es/articulo/provincia/detenido-gana...
https://www.laregion.es/articulo/ourense/detenido-incendio-a...
https://www.farodevigo.es/comarcas/2009/05/06/ganadero-caniz...
https://www.lavozdeasturias.es/noticia/asturias/2019/03/28/d...
https://elpais.com/politica/2016/02/26/actualidad/1456484922...
https://www.abc.es/videos-espana/20150814/ganaderos-detenido...
https://www.astorgadigital.com/identifican-ganadero-zona-pri...
https://www.burgosconecta.es/provincia/merindades/ganadero-h...
https://www.diariodecadiz.es/noticias-provincia-cadiz/Invest...
> tras esa oleada de incendios hay "imprudencias en quemas agrícolas, tanto para la regeneración de pastos como por aprovechamiento forestal". Y descarta un supuesto complot: "la investigación ha podido determinar que las posibles causas que originaron estos incendios no están relacionadas entre sí".
> La Guardia Civil ha recordado que las Administraciones ponen a disposición de los ganaderos equipos especializados para poder realizar estas quemas para pastos en condiciones de seguridad.
This is mostly negligence, not criminal intent as you insinuated. Granted, I would argue criminal negligence, but still negligence.
To put things in context, the article talks about 350 forest fires starting in the same weekend or so, in a spanish area sligthly smaller than Connecticut. On Sunday night there was 139 fires active at the same time with South winds of up to 120Km/h and an active warning of prohibition of burning any vegetation.
Trying to do "pasture regeneration" in this conditions goes long, long way beyond negligence.
Several independent reports pointed out that the Pedrogão Grande fires (the ones that killed 64 people) started at the power lines.
https://www.tsf.pt/sociedade/interior/pedrogao-edp-na-origem...
https://www.rtp.pt/noticias/pais/causa-do-incendio-principal...
https://www.dn.pt/sociedade/interior/incendio-causado-porlin...
Please stop these conspiracy theories. Many other fires can be tracked down to power lines.
It is allowed to make a small bonfire or a barbeque in your backyard at day when the index is low or moderate.
Not too sure. I was on holiday in the Algarve last year in Sept, and called the police to ask them about a lot of smoke drifting down into the town where I was. They just shrugged it off as "people are clearing their fields". I know Sept is not prime fire season, but there was little rain at the time last year.
* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/portugal-wil...
That's only one specific case though. However, the general sentiment is prevalent, as even fire chiefs comment on it:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40355787
The US has learned some lessons on reducing risk to dwellings, and other countries may want to look at public education campaigns if they haven't already:
* https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/By-topic/Wildfire/Prep...
Accused is different from charged. Even if the person saying it is the head of the fireman fighting the fire. It is not the police job (nor the fireman) to determine who is responsible for a crime. We have courts for that. In Portugal people get preemptively arrested when there is risk of escape among other things. This might have been the case. No mention is made on said person being charged with anything.
As can be read on one of the articles: “The suspect’s actions put people’s lives, houses and the forest at risk,” the police said, without explicitly saying that the detained man was responsible for the ongoing wildfire.
I am not saying that there are no bad agents at play. I am just pointing out that the public uproar against "fire mafias" and fire starters is so big that it reaches fire chiefs and police officers. It then gets out on the news which propagates it further, just like an avalanche ball.
That said:
Now is my time for a conspiracy theory.
The recent past (cambrige analytica et al) has taught us that most of our rage reactions are being manipulated and abused by higher interests. In this case who might be the big player influencing public opinion through news and propaganda that focus on supposed fire-starters and "fire mafias" ? (cof E cof D cof P)
:)
Do you really think all those big fires are the result of a conspiracy of evil shepherds?
If you want fuel for your conspiracies, just use Google and you'll find most fires are the result of negligence, mental illness and entering suspicion territory: loggers ( Leiria ) and fire fighting "industrial complex", since it has been reported over the years in various places, the usual low flying small airplanes throwing something out and minutes later everything is on fire.
Follow the money.
Seemed like a neat businesses, and I guess if I’d have been lucky I might have seen them in NYC happily eating grasses in Central and Inwood parks.
Sometimes you just gotta eat away your problems before they eat away at you I suppose :-).
Was always strange to wake up in the morning and wonder why I was hearing “baaa”ing from outside.
It was discussed here within this year, but I can't find the discussion page. One possible link: https://returntonow.net/2017/11/30/cows-can-turn-desert-back...
Review of the book:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/28/wilding-isabel...
He received a lot of criticism, but the evidence shows it's working. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/19...
The places where it's not working are usually overgrazed or missing other elements that prevent erosion.
The problem of desertification can be solved everywhere, though it's not always easy. You need to:
- prevent wind erosion by adding the right grasses
- prevent wind erosion by creating terraces
- make sure leaves, branches and other dead materials are added to the humus layer
- protect the vegetative cover by adding trees
- cycle nutrients through grazing
- trap water in the humus layer, pits, ditches
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/13/pigs-rad...
This idea that animals just eat the produce of intensive farming (or that grazing pastures are planted by men specifically for that purpose) is wrong in many parts of the world.
We have the obvious example of Argentina, where free grazing cattle uses the naturally available grass to get fed.
In the case of Southern Europe, there are also goats that have been used to clean the forests for a long time in order to prevent fires, and that provides for most or even all of their feeding requirements (besides fulfilling the important role of fire prevention).
The idea going around how animals are so inefficient per Kg of food/Kg CO2, fails to take into account (basically all the time) that part of those animals, only consume naturally occurring flora that is in no way planted by men.
P.S.: As an interesting related side note, there are a lot of cooking recipes for old goat in Portugal (the meat needs to be cooked differently).
That is true. Question is why. In NZ our beef is still exclusively reared on pasture (with hay and winter crops like brassicas for winter feed), I've never understood why there's such a move to feeding grain to cattle overseas.
Also feedlots.
- Feed lots can fit a whole lot more cows per acre.
- Corn tends to fatten up cows more (and more quickly) than grazing.
- Increased fat content = meat that grades higher and tends to sell for more meaning you also earn more $/lb on top of the other reasons.
Basically, it was determined that corn was the cheapest way to generate certain caloric targets. This achieved that objective and also secondarily helped with certain political objectives. So there's a whole subsidy and trade system around corn growth that basically stifles everything else.
The outcome for agriculture has overall been devastation for all but the largest operators. The "scale up" makes it impossible for all but the largest farms to compete. When my parents were kids in the 60s, a diversified, smallish farm was a sustainable thing. When I was a kid in the 80s/90s, they concentrated on bigger dairy or corn operations. Today, they're going out of business or make money selling doughnuts.
I'd love to get hold of some, it'd be good for cooking chamois and tahr in my country.
Fun fact, goat is the most widely eaten meat in the world.
This is the wikipedia page talking about the most famous dish: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanfana
This is one of the recipes: https://aldeiasdoxisto.pt/artigo/531
Do you have a trusted source for this?
A quick search query using my favorite search engine tells otherwise. But that's just random internet information.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/most-consumed-meat-in-world_n...
Although to be fair, pork makes way more sense.
The article does not disprove the (somewhat vaguely) stated hypothesis.
I am not sure there are a lot of recipes for this type of meat as it is claimed.
Mostly it is either slow roasted in an oven or slow cooked in a stew with some variations on stew ingredients.
The main difference is in the longer cooking time and in preparing the meat.
Traditionally people remove the lymph nodes from certain areas under the legs and some of the nearby fat tissue. Otherwis this tissue will give a really unpleasant taste/smell to the cooked meat.
I was under the impression (my personal take) that there are quite a few different ways to prepare them though, although the end result (the dish itself) is similar.
Naturally available grass that previously had rainforests over it?
I mean, yes, livestock eats grass but there's still a lot of livestock that eats beans.
https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/100636377572388864...
She summarises it in a single tweet at the end:
In places where there's limited land and a surplus of water,
it makes a lot of sense to optimize for land. So there, grow & eat crops.
And in places where there's a lot of land and limited water,
it makes sense to optimize for water. So there, grow & eat ruminants.
Probably some friend of a friend of a NYT journalist learned about it now.
Even their bushes and trees are encouraging fires as a vector for growth. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_National_Park#Agricultu...
[2] https://www.livescience.com/40583-australia-wildfires-eucaly...
That is a nice thing to hear. Is this common or is it an exception?
> My only point of reference for this kind of thing would be
> like an American landowner in the Southwest allowing a Navajo
> rancher from the reservation to graze on their property. Is
> it basically the same thing, or is it somehow "different"?
One difference is that Arizona was founded as a state earlier than Israel, so people feel that "it's older, so it is OK now".
Another difference is that America decided "all the land is ours", then herded the Navajo into reservations. In Israel we built in specific places and the Bedouins continued to be nomadic around us.
Note also that the Bedouins were until recently very nomadic, but today few Bedouin are nomadic. When the Bedouins were nomadic they would roam huge areas, but "occupy" only a small area at any one time. From what I understand, the idea "this land is OURS" didn't pop into anyone's mind, each family (Hamula) would roam and they pretty much did not need to bother fighting over land. Only when permanent settlements started being built, and thus land was removed from the common pool, did this become an issue.
Another issue is that today, a sort of "land war" is happening between some Bedouins and the state of Israel. I actually believe that the state stared the problem and then it escalated. In a nutshell, the state is forcing Bedouins off some settled land and in response the Bedouins are starting to claim more lands as "permanent settlements". In one particular case that I'm aware of, the Bedouins have been pushed off a parcel of land and then returned over 100 times. We're not talking about grazing land, which there is enough of for everybody to share and build on. We are talking about tents and stables and families. There is a huge difference between the state building a town on a corner of the grazing land, and the state forcefully remove people from these places. The former is the case 99% of the time, but the latter is happening and any decent person will, as I am, oppose it.
That's interesting. I guess it depends on the definition of country which is a relatively modern concept, and the meaning of "gain". If I take it loosely, then your question could be defined as which first peoples have managed to retain the land that they were the first to populate. Is that a fair interpretation? For example, it was interesting for me to realize that Vietnamese, Thais, Malays, Indonesians, Phillipinos, actually extinguished (meaning genetic/cultural extinguishment through assimilation or genocide) the aboriginal people of those lands (Papuan-like peoples) and the Australians, New Zealanders are quite far along in that process as well.
The Sentinelese of India have managed to hold on to their island, albeit it is a fragile hold, and credit to Indian establishment for holding steadfast to that policy of allowing them to completely self-determine their lives. Although I do fear that period may come to an end if CNFC (China) explorations and fishing vessels continue to pursue that region.
I'm realizing I'm ill equipped to answer your question. It is definitely interesting.
What?
The reply I'm replying to is the propaganda. He has no idea where I live, he sees the word "Israel" and assumes that means that I stole land.
In fact the place where I live, like the vast majority of places, has had good relations with the Bedouins and has since the beginning. These are grazing lands, and the Bedouins do graze most of it. We're built up on the rocky hilltops where there is nothing to graze, the only thing that could grow there might be olive trees. The Bedouins likely have had their herds graze here before the houses were build, but that doesn't make it "their land" and more than the store where you buy your bread is "your store". Unless you think that each Bedouin has the equivalent personal land sized several times any large city, and they all overlap!
I'm not disputing the fact that there is an Israeli-Arab conflict. I understand the argument "Israel steals land" even if I dispute it. Separate from that, there is an issue of Bedouin land. But neither argument is the one that is being made here, parent poster is conflating issues to influence your opinion. That's not uncommon when people are motivated by hate.
That is a naïve comparison applied to how land ownership in Palestine works and worked and in that way it's just feeding the myth of "A Land with no People for a People with no Land". That is not hate, that just means that the entire modern country of Israel was founded by driving out the people that were already living there.
Maybe consider what would happened to the Bedou if they weren't trying to make "good relations" with the people who were suddenly bulding on the land that they need in order for their livestock to survive. Pretending there is any space for "terrificness" in that situation is clearly incorrect.
And labeling any opposition to your narrative of "terriffic relation" of the occupiers to the occupied as "hate" is kind of supporting the idea that the term "propaganda" seems not entirely incorrect.
Estimates of percentages vary depending which side of the narrative the estimator sits, but most Arabs who left the land of Palestine in 1948 did so at the insistence of Arab leaders who promised to clean the land of the Jews. I'm not disputing that the Jewish armies of the time committed atrocities. In fact, there is a place less than a half-hour drive from my house where an atrocity took place. You won't be surprised to hear that the Arabs committed atrocities of their own.
But none of that is under discussion. You are conflating the Bedouins with what are nominally termed Palestinians. The Bedouins are a different people, don't intermarry with them, and have had a separate spate of problems with the Jews than did the Palestinians. There is even some animosity between the groups, for instance the Bedouins can volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces.
I understand exactly your viewpoint, and you probably do not even realize that you are conflating two issues. I'm not even disputing the general gist of your viewpoint even though I reject it. I am disputing the relation of your viewpoint to the relations that my settlement has with the Bedouins. Not all Arabs peoples here consider themselves part the "the Palestinian struggle", or consider their grief with the Israeli state as part of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict.
There is no useful discussion to be had based on your belief that I am too stupid, while you understand exactly what I am thinking.
So while I obviously do not agree with you, let's leave it at that.
This sounds so much easier than it practically is - unless you're talking electrical fence or have something really decent you can setup temoporarily? Our goats destroy, both willingly and unwillingly, any simple fence in hours or days.
no underbrush or scrub left - just the trees
We have a rather large species of goats (maybe largest, something Nubian) and they eat the bark of trees so unless you get them away from the tree or the tree has a sufficient diameter which makes it hard enough to get their teeth on it, at least 30cm or so, the trees also don't survive :)
The genus is pretty poisonous, but it even the goats respect it its chemical defenses must be really impressive. There are not a lot of plant species that goats avoid.
For one - admittedly odd - example of training goats for this purpose: http://yogoats.org/
Eight Portuguese regions have already smashed their local records as a warm blast of air from North Africa sweeps the continent.
August 2018
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/weather-heat...