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- Title
Wildfires as legacies of agropastoral abandonment: Gendered litter raking and managed burning as historic fire prevention practices in the Monte Pisano of Italy.
- Authors
Mathews, Andrew S.; Malfatti, Fabio
- Abstract
Agropastoral practices that historically reduced the flammability of Mediterranean landscapes are poorly understood due to state prohibitions and lack of scientific interest. Oral histories, analysis of agronomical writings, transect walks, and ethnographic study of fire managers and community members in the Monte Pisano of Italy, find legacies of traditional agropastoral practices in present-day landscapes. Forest leaf litter raking, largely carried out by women, combined with fire wood cutting and burning to greatly reduce fire risk. Historic stigmatization of traditional burning and ignoring gendered peasant labor have reduced contemporary scientists' and fire managers' understandings of ecological processes and of options for reducing fire risk. Fire managers in the Mediterranean, and in areas around the world affected by rural depopulation, would benefit from a better understanding of traditional agropastoral and fire management practices. Litter raking has been understudied outside Central Europe, is often gendered, and may have important ecological consequences around the world.
- Subjects
ITALY; FIRE prevention; WILDFIRE prevention; FIRE management; FOREST litter; TRADITIONAL ecological knowledge; WILDFIRES; WOOD
- Publication
AMBIO - A Journal of the Human Environment, 2024, Vol 53, Issue 7, p1065
- ISSN
0044-7447
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s13280-024-01993-x