Forest fires: Assembly looks at prevention before high-risk summer

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: Riccardo Milani / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 07:30, May 15, 2023

The bill, already adopted at first reading unanimously by the Senate, will be debated from 16:00 until Wednesday in the Assembly. It passed without difficulty the course of the examination in committee, in a consensual climate despite reservations of the left.

Putting in place a "national strategy"

After a gruelling summer 2022 on the forest fire front in France, the Pyrénées-Orientales have already been the scene in mid-April of the first major fire of this year in the country, with flames that have traveled about 1,000 hectares.

Global warming, with the increase in severe droughts, "will globally increase by 50% the exposure of French forests to the risk of forest fires by 2050," said Renaissance MP Sophie Panonacle, one of the rapporteurs of the text.

Faced with the multiplication of "extraordinary" fires, sometimes affecting areas hitherto spared, the bill initiated by LR and centrist senators lays the foundations for a "national strategy", associating all the actors concerned and including agricultural areas. The text also wants to "better regulate the interfaces between forests" and urban areas and raise public awareness.

Haro on cigarette butts

Among the planned measures, the Senate has strengthened the legal obligations of clearing brush for owners of land near forests, with increased sanctions in case of breaches, further increased by the deputies in committee.

Another provision makes the sale of land conditional on compliance with these obligations, of which purchasers and tenants will have to be better informed. An authorisation to use drones for the control of these brush clearances by communities was added during the examination in committee by MEPs.

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Faced with the many fires caused by cigarette butts, the text enshrines at the legislative level the prohibition of smoking in the woods or forests most exposed to the risk of fire, and up to 200 meters from these areas, during "risk periods". And the throwing of cigarette butts is explicitly included among the causes of unintentional fire punishable by law. An article inscribes in the law the possibility for the prefect to prohibit certain agricultural work in case of high risk of fire, with compensation if necessary.

"We hope that this consensual text will be adopted and published before the summer," LR deputy Julien Dive told the committee, stressing that "the drought of this winter already poses the risk of new large-scale forest fires".

Some measures not strong enough for the left

Left-wing MEPs support the text, but regret that the measures are insufficient in their eyes. "We must not be satisfied with a simple national strategic plan against the risk of fire, but develop a plan for the preservation of forests," said Socialist MP Stéphane Delautrette in committee. The rapporteur Sophie Panonacle agrees, but this "will be the subject of another bill which will be Act II" of the one under discussion, she assured.

Insoumise and ecologists demand in particular to limit the decried practice of "clear-cutting", that is to say the felling of all the trees of a plot. Like the Socialists, they are also calling for a strengthening of the resources of the National Forestry Office (ONF).

In 2022, "72,000 hectares including 60,000 hectares of forests went up in smoke" in France, recalled at the end of April the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu, announcing the broadcast from June by Météo-France of a new "Forest Weather" to alert the population to the risk of fire.

The government also announced in April the reinforcement of the means against fires, with nine additional planes and helicopters water bombers mobilized in 2023, bringing the number of aircraft from 38 to 47, as well as nearly 500 additional firefighters.