“Fire Ecology Across Boundaries”: the international congress focused on wildfires

The current operating model based only on the approach of fire suppressionhas generated what experts call the “fire-paradox”: the control of all wildfiresin the seasons with mild weather generates a fuel load which increases theprobability of catastrophic wildfires in the years with extreme climate. Eventhough the fire has been present on earth long before man, and for at least440 million years it has been an essential component of many land ecosy-stems, today wildfires are a recurrent social emergency that modern humanand financial resources cannot manage. The present challenges stress theneed to enhance the debate on potential solutions according to fire ecology:efficient alternatives to the wildfire suppression at all cost, the use of moretraditional landscape management for adaptation of ecosystems under a chan-ging climate, the benefits of prescribing fire to maintain long-term ecosystemservices and finally the need to establish a wildfire risk culture through trans-disciplinary science and enhance effective societal engagement. The “FireEcology Across Boundaries”Congress to be held in Florence from 20 to 23October 2020 (http://fireacrossboundaries.org/) will be the opportunity to dis-cuss the ecology and management of fire together with top internationalexperts.