At the start of July, the political messages are like the smoke rising from the south of France, and even beyond the Pyrenees: dark. The hectares that were prey to the flames number in the thousands. And it is a view of the mind that once the fire is put out, the crisis is over. The scar on nature, the economic fabric and the memory of the inhabitants takes years to fade.
If we want our landscapes to be protected from fire, the fight must begin. The public authorities are calling for the mobilization of everyone, and not just firefighters, the famous fire soldiers. Because, it is about waging a form of war whose enemy to fight is a merciless burning gas. This war has its codes: front line, counter-fire… It has its fickle allies: drought, heatwave, wind, agricultural land or urban wasteland. It also has its strategies and its different phases in the course of operations, on land and in the air. Without forgetting its root causes, global warming.
But, for nature defenders, the most to fear is an invisible enemy: neglect. It is everyone’s business, even the best informed people like this ONF employee indicted for this reason last month as part of the investigation into the fire which ravaged Corbières in 2025.
We know nature is fragile; the current weather makes it flammable. Its safety therefore depends on the attention of all of us, at all times. The deployment of new techniques and often worn-out means will not overcome the danger, because the reality of the summers to come, starting with that of 2026, will be written at the heart of the following tension: the situation is each time exceptional for the inhabitants, but, on the scale of our country, it is predictable. Let’s not make it inevitable.
