Going up in smoke: how livestock keeping can reduce wildfires

In recent years there have been devastating wildfires across the world. Wildfire incidence is increasing with climate change, and wildfires are predicted to increase by 50% by the end of the centuryi . Such intense, uncontrolled wildfires are massively damaging to environments and to people, involving multiple deaths – including among firefighters - and widespread destruction of property.

In many settings, it is the lack of grazing that results in this build-up of dangerous fire loads and (perhaps counterintuitively) the lack of well-managed fires. A common response to the increase in wildfires is to invest in fire suppression strategies. This can make matters worse, as excluding livestock, for example, can increase fire loads.