Farmers, Politicians Blame Each Other as Wildfires Burn in Puglia

More than 1,400 wild­fires have burned across the south­ern Italian region of Puglia in the last few weeks, destroy­ing olive groves and their sur­round­ings, includ­ing areas severely impacted by Xylella fas­tidiosa.

The local branch of the farm­ers asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti, has esti­mated that in a mat­ter of days more than 600 olive trees spread over nine hectares (22 acres) have burned down in the Ugento area alone, not far from Lecce.

Coldiretti esti­mated that there has been an aver­age of 30 fires each day this sum­mer, a fig­ure derived from calls to the local fire brigades as well as the local sta­tions of the Italian Civil Protection orga­ni­za­tion.

The asso­ci­a­tion believes that hot­ter-than-nor­mal tem­per­a­tures have fueled the wild­fires, but Xylella fas­tidiosa has also been iden­ti­fied as a major cause of the spread of the fires among the groves of Italy’s largest olive oil pro­duc­ing region.

“Thousands of trees have burned in the last two months in the Lecce area, often within aban­doned groves where trees killed by Xylella still stand,” Savino Muraglia, pres­i­dent of Coldiretti Puglia, said.

Farmers believe that the dead trees con­sti­tute a sig­nif­i­cant risk for the spread of Xylella as well as for the safety of the coun­try­side, as they are often sur­rounded by dry grass, which burns eas­ily.

“It is unac­cept­able,” Muraglia said. ​“Our olive trees suf­fer invalu­able dam­age and yet farm­ers can­not uproot the trees, plant new ones and, most of all, cul­ti­vate the needed crop diver­si­fi­ca­tion.”

Coldiretti also empha­sized how dif­fi­cult it is for the local fire brigades to extin­guish the flames, stat­ing that up to 300 litres (almost 80 gal­lons) of water are required to extin­guish a sin­gle olive tree.

However, the idea that Xylella is a major cause of the olive tree wild­fires is not a uni­ver­sally accepted one, with one local politi­cian mus­ing that some of the fires may be set inten­tion­ally to remove prob­lem­atic trees.

“Every day small and large olive orchards affected by Xylella catch on fire,” regional coun­cil­man Sergio Blasi said. ​“While fate and tem­per­a­tures are obvi­ous causes for those inci­dents, one could think that there are peo­ple who want to get rid of olive trees that are no longer fruit­ful and clear space for other ven­tures.”

Blasi is behind the approval of a regional law that for­bids any Xylella-infected olive grove owner from chang­ing the des­ig­nated use of the land for at least seven years, a law which is meant to deter acts of arson in olive groves.

However, the pres­i­dent of the Coldiretti Lecce, Gianni Cantele, strongly denied the pos­si­bil­ity that farm­ers might be set­ting the fires them­selves.

Instead, he said the fires were proof that the region’s farm­ers need con­crete inter­ven­tions ​“to uproot the trees, replant their groves and let those areas come back to life after years of announce­ments, promises and lack of a true impe­tus to restore our olive her­itage.”

Coldiretti asked all involved par­ties to finally face the Xylella threat and said it is not a prob­lem affect­ing farm­ers alone.

“Anyone think­ing that Xylella is a dis­ease strik­ing agri­cul­ture alone does not see the real­ity of the dam­ages this pathogen has brought to the local econ­omy as a whole,” Muraglia said. ​“From agri­cul­ture to tourism, all the way up to the related com­mer­cial and arti­sanal activ­i­ties con­nected to agribusi­ness and hos­pi­tal­ity.”

Coldiretti has said that the sur­veil­lance and main­te­nance of the territory’s olive groves by agri­cul­tural com­pa­nies is an impor­tant step to pre­vent wild­fires from spread­ing.

The asso­ci­a­tion added that a recently-imple­mented reg­u­la­tion allows farm­ers to sign agree­ments with local author­i­ties to develop and deploy prac­tices that help safe­guard the land from wild­fires and other nat­ural dis­as­ters.

• Corriere Salentino
• Coldiretti Puglia
• La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno