Last month, France experienced one of the worst wildfires in its history. Just outside of Bordeaux, towering flames bulldozed through forest and shrubland, the intense heat and smoke forming a fire-fueled thundercloud called a pyrocumulonimbus that had never previously been recorded in the country.
France is not alone. An ongoing wave of wildfires across Southern Europe has so far this year burned more than half a million hectares—an area equivalent to Grand Canyon National Park—far exceeding the area burned by August 2025, the worst year on record. The fires have displaced more than 300,000 people and taken the lives of several firefighters.
As the region heats up, countries are spending billions on firefighting efforts. But wildfire experts say a greater emphasis on preventative measures is needed to stop this year’s disaster from becoming a regular occurrence. “[Scientists] totally agree that we pretty much know what we need to do, but we’re massively lagging behind,” says Stefan Doerr, a geographer at Swansea University.
Wildfires have always occurred in Southern Europe, thanks to the region’s hot, sunny summers. But climate change has greatly increased the risk. Since the 1980s, the number of “fire weather” days—scorching, dry, breezy days—has more than doubled across much of the region, according to a paper published last month in Scientific Reports. And this is starting to translate into more extreme fires. “We have seen the last few years are just the beginning of a trend, and in the future, we will unfortunately see more very active [fire] seasons,” says Raúl Cordero, a geoscientist at the University of Groningen and author on the paper.
Changing European land management practices also mean fires can spread farther and last longer. When low-lying plants dry out in summer, fire easily tears through them on shrubland, and in forests the plants act as “ladder fuels,” allowing flames to climb into trees that otherwise wouldn’t easily burn. Historically, Europe had lots of small-scale farmers with livestock that kept such vegetation in check, says David Demeritt, co-director of the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society at King’s College London. It was a joint effort: Sheep ate the grass and goats munched on woody brush and tall shrubs. But rural populations have been drifting toward cities. In 1960, 42% of EU citizens lived in rural areas; by 2025, that figure dropped to just 25%. Livestock numbers are down, and more often kept in confined, industrialized farms. “There’s no animals. And the fuel has kind of come back again,” Demeritt says.
Across Europe, more and more money is being invested into firefighting resources. “For policymakers, it’s an easy solution,” says Claudia Berchtold, coordinator of Firelogue, a Horizon 2020 EU project supporting wildfire research and informing policy. But experts agree that governments need to focus on reducing the risk of wildfires occurring in the first place. “First of all, we have to stop climate change,” says Alexander Held, a wildfire specialist at the European Forest Institute. “But we can’t do this in the short term.” Instead, he says it is vital to modify the land to cut back on the accumulation of fuel.
One strategy is to thin highly flammable vegetation by reintroducing grazing livestock, cutting back growth, or even using prescribed burning—intentionally burning areas of land under low-risk conditions. (Many of these recommendations parallel actions being tried in increasingly fire-prone regions of North America.)
Making landscapes wetter can also suppress fires. Industrial farming, draining of wetlands, and the rerouting of waterways have dried out vast swaths of Europe. Incentivizing more sustainable farming practices, closing drainage holes, and even letting beavers rework rivers could add water back to the soil.
The type of plant matters, too. Fires can quickly spread through pine forests, requiring wide firebreaks to stop the enormous flames from jumping across. But “it’s not necessarily a case of just getting rid of patches of forest, but just mixing them,” Doerr says. Introducing strips of more fire-resilient deciduous trees, for example, is an option.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. The towering pine forests of Bordeaux require a different approach to the tinderbox shrubland of Greece. But even with the right tools in hand, it can be difficult to get local buy-in for prevention measures, Berthold says. Take prescribed burning, for instance. Many governments have historically cracked down on rural farmers clearing land with fire, so if officials try to do so themselves, without lifting restrictions for locals, they may face pushback. People may also be worried about smoke emissions from such burns.
Reverting landscapes to their earlier state can have unintended consequences, too. Doerr agrees there are cases where rewetting regions could be “absolutely useful,” but points out, for example, that malaria disappeared from many parts of Europe largely thanks to the draining of the landscape.
Shifting strategy from fire suppression to prevention is also hampered by bureaucracy, because fire and land management tend to cross several ministerial responsibilities and budgets. For real change, “usually you need an incident so it’s really high up on the political agenda,” Berchtold says. Following Portugal’s devastating 2017 fires, for example, the country created a dedicated agency for fire management and established new preventative measures, including a ban on planting highly flammable eucalyptus trees, subsidies for rural shepherds to graze their herds, and enforcing laws that require landowners to clear vegetation around property in rural or forested areas. Though it is early days, Portugal hasn’t since faced fires of the same magnitude.
There are some signs that Europe may be waking up to the risk. In March, for instance, the European Commission presented recommendations for managing wildfire risk, such as diversifying forests and increasing grazing. But nothing is mandated. Many wildfire experts, including Berchtold, say an EU directive requiring member states to assess risks and develop local strategies would be useful.
The science behind those strategies is settled, Held says. “The real need is getting the knowledge that we collected over the past 40 years … into action,” he says. “It’s urgent.”