It is a bill rather consensual. The deputies examine from this Monday, May 15, a battery of measures to better prevent forest fires. The bill, already unanimously adopted at first reading by the Senate, will be debated from 4 p.m. until Wednesday May 17 in the National Assembly. She passed without difficulty the course of the examination in committee.
After a trying summer of 2022 on the forest fire front in France, particularly in Gironde, near the Arcachon basin, the Pyrénées-Orientales were already the scene in mid-April of the first big fire of this year in the country, with flames that covered approximately 1,000 hectares.
This summer still promises to be high risk and the following summers are also sources of concern. Global warming, with the increase in severe droughts, “will globally increase by 50% the exposure of French forests to the risk of forest fires by 2050”, underlined in committee the Renaissance deputy for Gironde Sophie Panonacle, the one of the rapporteurs of the text.
Faced with the multiplication of “non-standard” fires, sometimes affecting areas hitherto spared, the bill initiated by LR and centrist senators lays the foundations for a “national strategy”. It associates all the actors concerned and includes agricultural areas. The text also wants to “better regulate the interfaces between forests” and urban areas and raise public awareness.
Haro on the cigarette butt jet
Among the measures planned, the Senate has reinforced the legal obligations of clearing for owners of land near forests, with increased penalties in the event of breaches, further increased by the deputies in committee. Another provision conditions the sale of land on compliance with these obligations, of which buyers and tenants must be better informed. An authorization to use drones for the control of these clearings by the communities was added during the examination in committee by the deputies.
Faced with the many fires caused by cigarette butts, the text enshrines at the legislative level the ban on smoking in the woods or forests most exposed to the risk of fire, and up to 200 meters from these areas during “periods at risk”. . Cigarette butt throwing is explicitly included among the criminally sanctionable causes of involuntary fire. An article enshrined in law the possibility for the prefect to prohibit certain agricultural work in the event of a high risk of fire, with compensation if necessary.
The left wants to strengthen the means of the ONF
“We want this consensual text to be adopted and published before the summer,” said LR MP Julien Dive. He stressed that “this winter’s drought is now posing the risk of new large-scale forest fires”.
If the deputies on the left support the text, they regret insufficient measures. “We must not be satisfied with a simple national strategic plan against the risk of fire, but develop a plan for the preservation of forests”, launched the socialist deputy Stéphane Delautrette in committee. The rapporteur Sophie Panonacle agrees: this “will be the subject of another bill which will be Act II” of that under discussion, she assured.
Rebellious and environmentalists are asking in particular to limit the decried practice of “clear cuts”, that is to say the felling of all the trees on a plot. Like the Socialists, they are also calling for a strengthening of the resources of the National Forestry Office (ONF).
A new “Forest Weather”
In 2022, “72,000 hectares including 60,000 hectares of forest went up in smoke” in France, recalled Christophe Béchu at the end of April. The Minister for Ecological Transition had announced the dissemination from June by Météo-France of a new “Forest Weather” to alert the population to the risk of fire.
The government also announced in April the strengthening of resources against fires, with nine additional water bomber planes and helicopters mobilized in 2023, bringing the number of aircraft from 38 to 47, as well as nearly 500 additional firefighters.
The high risk of fires still exists in the Pyrénées-Orientales. On Twitter, this Monday, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced the dispatch of a water bomber helicopter and several intervention groups, in addition to departmental means.