These wildfires are preventable

Nearly 500,000 hectares have gone up in smoke during Europe's 2026 fire season so far, which cost over €3 billion in the first two months alone, according to a Financial Times analysis covering restoration costs in France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Romania. That figure already exceeds the European Commission's estimate of average EU-wide annual wildfire costs. In the past four years, wildfires have increased by 57%, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned. Throughout Europe, over 300,000 people have had to evacuate. In Spain, 14 people died in July in the Los Gallardos fire, three firefighters died in Greece, and two died in France. As the human toll across the continent continues to climb, the related heatwaves have caused an estimated 25,000 deaths, according to a Bloomberg analysis. The economic toll will run much higher than current estimates. Insurers, households and businesses are still tallying property and crop damage, as well as tourism disruption, while higher insurance premiums, uninsurable properties, and firefighting costs will be known later on. Climate economist Sarah Meier, from ETH Zurich university, estimates the fires' true economic toll could be three times her calculated 2011-2018 average of up to €2.1 billion a year in lost GDP across Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. “If the fires end up reaching cities, it's going to be far, far above that,” Meier told the FT. Prevention isn't sexy Yet roughly 90% of wildfire budgets across Europe still goes toward extinguishing fires rather than preventing them, despite officials and analysts having flagged this imbalance for years. Spanish forest engineers' estimates suggest that every euro spent on prevention saves around €100 in firefighting costs. The EU only just adapted its own strategy: in March 2026, the European Commission adopted a new Integrated Wildfire Risk Management communication, formally moving the bloc's focus away from a purely reactive, response-led firefighting model toward a proactive framework that prioritises landscape prevention and preparedness before disasters strike. So why is Europe still catching up? “The response is sexy. You see the lights, you hear the helicopters. Prevention isn't sexy. Nobody sees it. It's slow, but it bears fruit,” words were from João Carlos Verde, an adviser at Portugal's integrated fire agency (AGIF). Fuel for the fire Shrinking rural populations and land abandonment lead to unmanaged, overgrown landscapes that fuel bigger fires. “Greece has been experiencing an upward trend in recent years,” Apostolos Voulgarakis, professor in climate change at the Technical University of Crete, told us. “Attica, home to nearly half of Greece's population, lost nearly 40% of its forests between 2017 and 2024. Greece also saw some of the EU's largest and deadliest wildfires in recent years: Mati (2018, 104 deaths) and Evros (2023, 19 deaths).” Voulgarakis explained. In Portugal, 66 people died in the June 2017 wildfires, mostly in the Pedrógão Grande municipality. While humans bear the brunt of these fires, they also tend to be the cause of them: an estimated 95% of wildfires in Europe are directly or indirectly caused by human behaviour and activities, including negligence and arson. “90% of forest fires in Türkiye and the world are caused by humans,” explained forestry professor Doganay Tolunay from Istanbul University. “We see that these fires mostly occur as a result of negligence and accidents.” Many fires in Türkiye have been traced to malfunctioning power lines, construction sparks, and the intentional burning of gardens and fields. Human activity isn't the only factor driving the dramatic rise in wildfires. Drought, extreme heat, depleted groundwater, and fierce winds all make wildfires spread like, well, wildfire. These conditions also contribute to making wildfires “inextinguishable”, as firefighters describe them. The fires generate their own microclimate, which in turn reinforces the fire's dynamics. Fighting fire with fire Amid the smoke, evacuations, and billion-euro bills, local wildfire experts argue that a shift in forest management could prevent these blazes. “Fire is neither a good nor a bad thing,” fire ecologist Okan Ürker from Çankırı Karatekin University told us. He has spent two decades studying fire regimes in the Eastern Mediterranean. “Wildfires are a natural ecological phenomenon. What matters is how we manage it.” In the Eastern Mediterranean, it was historically normal for fires to occur every 40 or 50 years; they even helped regenerate the ecosystem, Ürker explained. But decades of suppressing natural fires, combined with rising human activity and climate change, have made today's fires more destructive than ever. “When we suppress them entirely and then mismanage the recovery, we turn a necessary ecological process into a disaster,” Ürker said. For centuries, Mediterranean communities managed fire through grazing, sustainable beekeeping, and controlled burns, Ürker explained. By combining these traditional methods with ecological science, wildfires can shift from an existential threat to a manageable, seasonal occurrence.