After devastating European fire season, experts call for new approach to protecting forests

Scenes from this summer's devastating wildfires in southern Europe reverberated around the world. Acres of olive groves reduced to charcoal. Livestock lying dead and burnt in blackened fields.

"I am ruined," one shepherd in Italy's Sardinia region told RAI, the country's public broadcaster. "Everything of mine burned. Everything."

On the Greek island of Evia, thousands of residents were forced to flee by boat as flames drove them to the water. Eventually consuming more than 1,000 square kilometres, it was "the largest single fire in history in Greece," according to Demetres Karvallas, the director of WWF Greece.

The summer of 2021 will be remembered as one of the worst European wildfire seasons on record, with more than 350,000 hectares — and counting — burnt across Italy, Greece and Spain, nearly three times the average over the past decade.

Temperature records were shattered across southern Europe, and simultaneous large fires challenged the ability of European authorities to co-ordinate.

"It's affecting the whole Mediterranean, from east to west," said Marc Castellnou, a fire chief and wildfire expert in Spain's Catalonia region. "It doesn't matter the amount of resources you have. The fire … will overcome you."

The fires have prompted a discussion among European officials about whether emergency services are prepared, after decades of austerity, for the consequences of climate change.