Why are we burning our forests?
Our forests are our national assets and values that need to be protected, cared for and approached with love. Go to the countries of foreigners, whom we say, "They envy us!" Go there, and even if you can't go, ask around. You will see how much higher their respect and love for nature is than ours.
I believe that it would not be of much use to explain the benefits of the forest, its effects on human beings and its contribution to the national economy to people who have never been near the forest in their lives and have only seen it from pictures and social media! As someone who escapes to nature whenever I have the opportunity, I am a person who lives these beauties on the spot and adopts a Stoic philosophy of life. There are times when I personally live in the forest. Unfortunately, most of our people have not developed a love of trees, a love of forests, and have not formed a concept of cognition towards nature. This is our reality. Why?
When you look at the forests and picnic areas, which are one of the places that our people prefer to go to supposedly to cool off and often to burn barbecue, you will understand what I mean. Our forests are our national assets and values that need to be protected, cared for and approached with love. Go to the countries of foreigners, whom we say, "They envy us!", and find out, even if you can't go there, ask them. You will see how much higher their respect and love for nature is than ours.
Every summer, fires are started in various parts of our country and our lungs are burning. Unfortunately, it is the same this summer. After every fire news, my heart burns and my morale deteriorates. As you know, forests, whether we are aware of it or not, contain the ecosystem that contains the most important life support mechanism in many areas, from breathing, breathing, oxygen-carbon dioxide balance, soil formation to depression therapy. This is the main reason behind the public interest, sensitivity and rush to extinguish forest fires. In fact, at least each and every one of us can feel that what is burning is not limited to our lungs, as is often stated, but covers our whole body and the entire environment surrounding it.
Regardless of their type, age, size, plants and of course trees are flammable materials. Forest fires are undoubtedly a very complex and difficult to manage phenomenon in terms of their causes, consequences and perception. Today's technology is able to bring people to and from the Moon and carry out ground surveys on Mars with almost zero error. However, it is not yet possible to reach this level of success in forest fires, which have many uncontrolled and uncontrollable parameters. In other words, we cannot prevent forest fires. We have to learn to live with the reality of fire.
As you know, forest fires have two main players and actors: human beings and the forest itself. Forests are like the children of forest engineers. Protecting forests, our natural wealth, is actually an engineering job. Engineering, on the other hand, requires an objective approach to phenomena such as forest fires. Long-term statistics kept by the General Directorate of Forestry (70-80 years) reveal that approximately 2 thousand forest fires break out every year in our country and on average these fires affect an area of 10 thousand hectares. Almost all of these fires (95 per cent) are caused by negligence, intention, cigarette butts, etc. In other words, the majority of fires are human-caused. Under these objective conditions, the need to explain the statistical data to the public and to ask for the active support of the Turkish public to improve the situation clearly arises. The Turkish public should understand that they are mainly responsible for reducing the 10 thousand hectares destroyed by forest fires every year to 9 thousand, 5 thousand, 3 thousand hectares, and they should feel or be forced to feel ready for the necessary behavioural changes. On the other hand, the General Directorate of Forestry, above all, must realise that it cannot cope with this task without the active and effective support of the public! Unfortunately, when we look at the practices and statements of the General Directorate of Forestry, we clearly see that it is far away from this understanding. This means that one of the most important actors of forest fires, human beings, has been completely neglected and ignored.
It is the people who burn forests, it is the forests that burn. Forests themselves are the second most important actor in forest fires. Especially in the Mediterranean climate zone, the fact that plants and forests have been in existence for millions of years is a result of the adaptation mechanisms they have developed. In other words, these forests are experienced in how to cope with fires. The fact that they can easily catch fire and that they can easily renew themselves after a fire are proofs of this experience. It is not possible to manage forest fires successfully without a deep understanding of these ecological relationships and dependency mechanisms between fires, plants and forests.
Our country's approach to forest fires is based on the principle of extinguishing fires, regardless of the cause, as soon as possible and at any cost. The concept of fighting forest fires reflects this understanding and does not seem to take into account the relationship between fires and forests. Every fire that breaks out is also a sign that the necessary conditions for a fire to start in that area have occurred. Although extinguishing the fire as soon as possible may seem like a success, the risk of burning the area continues to increase every year unless the necessary actions are taken to eliminate the causes of burning in the areas outside the extinguishing.
It is imperative to shift from a strategy of fighting forest fires that focuses on extinguishing forest fires as soon as possible at all costs to a strategy of Forest Fire Management that focuses on understanding the forest-fire relationship. The strategy of fighting forest fires, which has been aggressively implemented for years, has unknowingly condemned our forests to a structure that can easily catch fire and burn violently. The forest fire management strategy is based on keeping the amount of combustible fuels accumulated in the forest under constant control through different methods. This strategy is an active approach that emphasises the elimination of the causes of fires.
Theoretically, if there is no combustible fuels, there is no forest fire. The fact that the aggressive strategy of fighting forest fires has condemned our forests to an easily ignitable and violently combustible structure reveals that the second important actor, the forests, have also been made more ready to burn. In fact, this determination also forms the substructure of the human factor. People with high ignition potential live in close proximity to forests that can catch fire easily. People, who are sources of fire, somehow lead a life as neighbours of forests. This is the stage.
Although extinguishing a forest fire as soon as possible may seem like a success, the burning potential of our forests will continue to increase with each passing year as long as the necessary practices to eliminate the causes of burning in areas other than extinguishing cannot be implemented. On the other hand, the scarcity of scientific studies on forest fires in our country and the fact that the habit of reading each forest fire like a book and evaluating it like a laboratory study has not developed, as mentioned above, makes specialisation even more difficult, while the high rate of mobility of technical staff makes it almost impossible. It is not possible to expect high performance from the extras on such a stage where the accumulation of knowledge and experience is quite limited and forests are prone to ignite and people to ignite.
Contrary to public opinion, forest fires are mainly controlled and extinguished by land-based mechanisms and vehicles. These ground intervention activities provide personnel at all levels with factual knowledge and experience on the behaviour against fire.
However, helicopters used for aerial intervention function as an early intervention and fire monitoring tool. Their main task is to bring a sufficient number of fire personnel to the fire scene as soon as possible, to provide the necessary logistical services and to give the fire manager the chance to monitor the fire from a wide perspective. However, helicopters can also be used partly as an intervention vehicle for direct control and extinguishing of fires in emergency situations where life and property such as houses, facilities and valuable areas such as monumental forests are threatened.
With the influence of public opinion and media pressure, it has become a habit in our country to respond to all fires by helicopter, regardless of their size and risk status, and ground intervention has almost been forgotten. This high-cost habit leads to significant loss of knowledge and experience. Since flammable management is not applied in our forests, large fires often turn into high-energy fires, which greatly reduces the potential impact of the use of helicopters or aircraft. High energy fires are fires that create their own climatic conditions, and fires of this size can only be intervened by helicopters or aeroplanes from the flanks or flanks. Expensive technologies such as helicopters and aeroplanes can only perform efficiently and effectively in environments where suitable conditions are prepared. Otherwise, it becomes inevitable to enter into a vicious circle of increasing the number of helicopters every year.
It should be kept in mind that intervention to a fire with 10-20 aircraft requires a very high level of planning, management knowledge and experience. Due to the lack of organisation in our country, the unit area fire extinguishing cost is approximately 3 times higher than in the USA and EU countries.
In aerial interventions, the principle of "as few aircraft as possible, flammable method in as large areas as possible and ground intervention" applies. Red pine forests and maquis forests, which constitute the dominant vegetation of the Mediterranean region, are ecologically adapted to recurring fires at certain frequencies and have continued to exist and dominate the area for tens of thousands of years. Fires should be seen as a natural part of this region.
In this context, red pine is a fire-adapted species and a tree that can successfully regenerate itself in post-fire conditions. The single-aged and single-stratified old red pine forests that continue to exist around us are proof of this. For this reason, entering red pine and maquis areas immediately after forest fires with picks, shovels, dozers and diggers with the intention of reforesting these areas are wrong practices that are as harmful to these areas as the fire itself. Nature should be given at least one year's time in the burnt area. During this period, nature will enter into a process of self-renewal to a great extent with its own methods and will show that no additional intervention is necessary. In fact, every experienced eye can easily see this. At the end of one year, where nature is unable to regenerate itself, friendly support can be given to nature. As it happened in the aftermath of the Gallipoli Peninsula fire (1994) and similar incidents, entering the area with heavy construction equipment and planting saplings of unknown origin did not mean regenerating the forest, but uprooting it. We know that afforestation areas exhibit a highly flammable structure starting from 10-12 years of age until they reach 30-35 years of age. When necessary precautions are not taken, they burn easily, causing major economic and ecological changes. However, the ways of establishing fire-resistant forests were published in 1999, nearly a quarter of a century ago. For those who want to learn lessons, of course.
Stay with respectful love
Bibliography
Neyişçi, T. 1985: Historical Effects of Fires in Red Pine Forests of Antalya Doyran Region. Forestry Research Institute Publications, Technical Reports Series.
Neyişçi, T. 1986: The Effects of Controlled Burning on Soil Chemical Properties and Sapling Growth in Red Pine Forest Ecosystems. Forestry Research Institute Publications, Technical Bulletin Series No: 205
Neyişçi, T. 1987: A Study on Slow Burning Plant Species that can be used in the Prevention of Forest Fires. Nature, TUBITAK, Tar. And Or. D.
Neyisci, T. et al: 1999: Principles of Fire Resistant Forest Establishment: TUBITAK-TOGTAG_1342. Chamber of Forest Engineers Publication No: 21, Ankara...
