pyrocene-alliance

03/09/2026

You don’t have to live next to a forest to live with wildfire.

We still tend to imagine wildfire risk geographically.

The forest burns.

The communities at the wildland-urban interface are threatened.

Firefighters establish a perimeter.

And somewhere on a map, we draw a line around the incident.

But wildfire does not respect that line.

Smoke creates an entirely different geography.

During Europe’s severe 2026 fire season, smoke from major wildfires exposed millions of people to extremely poor air quality — including people living far away from the flames.

And today the World Health Organization highlighted something important: wildfire should no longer be understood only as an environmental emergency or an operational challenge for fire services.

It is increasingly a public-health issue.

That changes the way we should think about wildfire resilience.

A community does not need trees behind its houses to be affected.

Smoke can travel hundreds of kilometres.

Fine particles can enter cities that will never see a flame.

Health services can face additional pressure.

Outdoor workers, children, older people and people with existing respiratory or cardiovascular vulnerabilities can be affected long after the operational fire perimeter has become irrelevant.

Perhaps that means we need to rethink one of wildfire management’s most familiar concepts:

the interface.

The physical WUI may end where houses meet vegetation.

The functional wildfire interface does not.

It follows smoke.

Water.

Infrastructure.

Transport.

Economies.

And people.

This is why wildfire resilience cannot belong to fire services alone.

It belongs to land managers.

Municipalities.

Health authorities.

Urban planners.

Emergency managers.

And communities.

Because the consequences of wildfire increasingly connect places that may be hundreds of kilometres apart.

THE FIRELINE ENDS.

THE SMOKE DOESN’T.

Wildfire is a public-health issue.

Learn to live with fire.

01/09/2026

After wildfire, our first instinct is often to put everything back.

Replant the trees.

Restore the forest.

Recreate the landscape we remember.

It feels like recovery.

But there is a question we should ask before we begin:

Do we really want to recreate exactly what just burned?

Restoration is not the same as reconstruction.

And a landscape is not a building.

Sometimes active restoration is necessary.

Sometimes we need different species, different structures or different management.

Sometimes natural regeneration will produce a landscape better adapted to the conditions that now exist.

And sometimes the most intelligent intervention may simply be patience.

There is no universal answer. Restoration decisions need to reflect the ecosystem, its natural disturbance regime and the climate it will face in the decades ahead.

That means looking beyond the landscape we lost.

Because climate change creates an uncomfortable problem for restoration:

The past is not necessarily a blueprint for the future.

Our objective cannot always be to recreate yesterday’s landscape as faithfully and quickly as possible.

It should be to help ecosystems remain functional, diverse and resilient under tomorrow’s conditions.

That may mean allowing succession to happen.

It may mean assisting it.

It may mean changing how we manage the landscape.

And in fire-prone ecosystems, it means accepting that the next fire is part of the equation.

Post-fire recovery therefore offers something more than a chance to repair damage.

It offers a chance to adapt.

DON’T REBUILD WHAT JUST BURNED.

BUILD WHAT CAN LIVE WITH FIRE.

Learn to live with fire.

26/08/2026

Anton Beneslavskiy - second chair of Pyrocene Alliance about peat fires:

Does it make sense to wash dirt? Yes, it does. When I was in the Greenpeace Russia firefighting team, we called fighting peat fires 'washing dirt'. This is because it involved hours of monotonous dirty work. Because of pyrolysis.
Pyrolysis is a thermal decomposition process operated in the absence of oxygen, which could typically convert peat into three phases, namely semi-coke, liquid, and gas. The pyrolysis stage is typical of prolonged peat fires, and the semi-coke produced during this process is one of the main problems for firefighters.
Semi-coke is a solid substance that does not absorb water. When firefighters apply water to a burning peat hotspot, the ashes cool quickly and the water soaks in, leaving the semi-coke dry and hot. It has enough energy to dry and reignite the fuel several days after the firefighters left the scene.
What does a firefighter see after an hour of mixing water and dirt? Cold, wet mud. This seems safe and harmless. However, deep down, there are hot particles that are still undergoing pyrolysis and ready to reignite the peatland. Why does this happen? It is due to wrong tactics and a lack of post-fire control.
In order to destroy semi-coke and cool it properly, a water jet with a pressure of over 3 bars must be applied directly to the solid particle. This process can break a solid piece down into smaller parts, which will cool down when mixed with wet, cool mud. This means that firefighters need to detect the depth and location of semi-coke layers, and then wash and cool the hot ashes. They then need to destroy the semi-coke with a water jet and mix all the small particles with the soil.
Proper work takes a long time. This is why, in a moment of crisis when the fire service is overwhelmed by multiple incidents, peat fires are not properly extinguished – resources cannot stay for hours and hours in an area that seems cold and safe. They need to move on to another active fire. Mop-up work is not the most popular part of a firefighter's job. It is boring and dirty, and provides no moral satisfaction. Imagine that the mop-up operation needs to be extended to double or triple the usual time.
However, fighting peat fires is 90 per cent mopping up. Lack of proper mopping up can lead to new incidents. My colleague Craig Hope wrote a very true account of it in LinkedIn. In peat fires, a lack of proper tactics and control efforts can lead to a situation where the underground fire requires more water than the fire service has available.
If it takes at least one 1t of water to extinguish a 1 sq.m peat hotspot. Just imagine how much water the fire service would need if the entire peat bog were to smoulder. Transporting sufficient quantities of water will be a logistical challenge. And as large peat fires produce a lot of toxic smoke, they will become a threat to the public health.
All this will happen just because a few small particles of peat were not suppressed properly a month ago.

20/08/2026

When a peatland dries, fire changes the rules.

The wildfire in Belgium's High Fens is a reminder that wildfire resilience is not only about forests, fuels and firefighting.

Sometimes, it is about water.

Peatlands are landscapes shaped by water. But when prolonged drought — often combined with historical drainage and altered hydrology — dries the vegetation and organic soils, their relationship with fire changes dramatically.

Fire may no longer remain only at the surface.

It can pe*****te organic layers, smoulder below ground, persist for long periods and reappear after the visible flames are gone.

That makes these fires difficult to detect, difficult to reach and difficult to extinguish.

And it points towards a different way of thinking about wildfire resilience.

Not every landscape needs more clearing.

Not every landscape needs another firebreak.

Some landscapes need something much more fundamental:

They need their water back.

Restoring hydrology.
Retaining water in the landscape.
Rewetting degraded peatlands.
Protecting functioning peat ecosystems before drought turns them into vulnerable ones.

Because wildfire resilience has no single recipe.

Some landscapes evolved with regular fire. Fire may be essential to their ecological processes, vegetation dynamics and renewal.

Other landscapes may tolerate fire only rarely.

And some ecosystems may need to remain wet enough that fire plays little or no role at all.

So perhaps the first question shouldn't be:

“How do we stop fire?”

Nor should it automatically be:

“How do we live with more fire?”

The better questions are:

What is the role of fire in this landscape's life cycle?

How has that relationship been altered?

And which ecological processes need to be restored so that the landscape can become resilient again?

Sometimes that may mean bringing fire back.

Sometimes it may mean managing fire differently.

And sometimes — as with degraded peatlands — it may mean bringing the water back and keeping fire out.

Different landscapes. Different relationships with fire. Different solutions.

KEEP THE WATER.
KEEP THE RESILIENCE.

Learn to live with fire.

20/08/2026

🔥 “Remote systems don’t replace firefighters – they protect them.”
- Anton Beneslavskiy : Co-founder of -alliance

Technology is not here to replace people - it helps keep them safer.
Early detection and remote monitoring reduce risk, improve situational awareness, and support better decisions in the field.

11/08/2026

🔥 WILDFIRE TRAINING. IN A YOUTH PRISON.

Sometimes an idea sounds unusual — until you see what it can achieve.

DER SPIEGEL has taken a closer look at our wildfire training project at Jugendanstalt Hameln, where PyroceneAlliance, together with our partners, trains young inmates in practical wildfire response.

For us, this project has never been only about firefighting.

It is about responsibility. Trust. Teamwork. Discipline. And giving people the chance to discover what they are capable of.

At the same time, Europe needs something else urgently: more people who understand wildfire, fire behaviour and the limits of suppression.

Hameln brings these two challenges together.

Young people who are often defined by their past are given responsibility for something that matters. They learn that others depend on them — and that they can depend on each other.

And they learn one of the most important lessons in wildfire management:

You cannot control everything.
But you can prepare.
You can train.
You can work as a team.
And you can make a difference.

We are proud that DER SPIEGEL is giving this project attention.

Because perhaps this is exactly what wildfire resilience should be about:

Building stronger landscapes — and stronger communities.

🔥 Learn to live with fire.

Im Jugendstrafvollzug in Hameln können Häftlinge lernen, Feuer zu löschen. Der Richter Michael Herrmann erklärt, wie das die jungen Leute verändert. Und ihn selbst.

08/08/2026

You cannot extinguish a heatwave.

Every summer, we ask more of our firefighters.
Longer deployments. More extreme fire behaviour. Larger evacuations. More aircraft. More resources.
They will continue to do extraordinary work.

But there is one thing no firefighter, no airtanker and no emergency response can ever do:
Extinguish a heatwave.

If Europe is entering a future of hotter, drier and longer fire seasons, our strategy cannot rely on suppression alone.

We must build resilience before the first ignition.
Through landscapes that slow fire instead of feeding it.

Through fuel management.
Through grazing.
Through fire-adapted forests.
Through communities designed to live with fire—not simply survive it.

Resilience is not created during an emergency.
It is created by the decisions we make years before the smoke appears.

Every investment in resilience today reduces tomorrow's emergency response.
You cannot extinguish a heatwave.
But you can create resilience.

Learn to live with fire.

06/08/2026

🔥 "Purpose is stronger than punishment."
- Michael Herrmann
Real resilience starts with purpose. When people understand why they protect forests and communities, commitment becomes stronger than any rule.
A simple message with a powerful impact.
-alliance

03/08/2026

FIRES, CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOSSIL FUELS

The summer of 2026 was marked by catastrophic wildfires across Europe. Firefighters lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated, and nature and property were destroyed. Images of terrifying, infernal flames devouring vegetation and burning down homes flooded the media. At times like these, a heated debate naturally arises within society about who or what is to blame for the disaster. Unfortunately, however, the voices of professionals in such a debate are often drowned out by politicised, unprofessional assessments and assumptions.
To my regret, I am forced to point out that my colleagues in the environmental movement (I worked for Greenpeace for over ten years as a staff member and freelancer, and collaborated with the WWF) take a rather simplistic view of the problem of wildfires, focusing on just one aspect and thereby creating a misleading narrative.
The narrative goes like this: “Look at these catastrophic fires; they are the result of climate change; climate change is the result of the use of fossil fuels; oil companies are to blame for the fires; let’s make the polluters pay.” To the public, the demand to ‘make polluters pay’ is presented as a response to the problem and is perceived as a way of solving it.
And even if we set aside the debate over whether the ‘make polluters pay’ principle will work, or whether it can slow down climate change, it must be clearly understood that imposing measures on oil and gas companies will not solve the problem of wildfires within any reasonable timeframe. In other words, it will not solve the problem of wildfires for society.
It is essential to be fully aware that wildfires are an extremely complex phenomenon, shaped both by the climate and by the way in which landscapes and ecosystems are managed, altered and utilised. A fire disaster arises from human irresponsibility, inappropriate interaction with fire in the environment, urbanisation, the types and methods of agriculture and forestry, and so on and so forth.
I can state with complete professional confidence that, when it comes to wildfires, there is no ‘silver bullet’ – no single ideal solution; what is required here is a complex, professional approach and a thorough assessment of all the possible consequences of every practice employed. And it is quite possible that, when choosing which tools to use, we will have to choose not between good and bad, but between bad and very bad.
The most striking example is the devastating wildfires where, due to their nature conservation status, no preventive fire-fighting measures were implemented. In an attempt to keep ecosystems ‘untouched’, these areas were lost to the flames.
Fellow environmentalists and conservationists, I have a big request: if you wish to use the topic of wildfires in your communications, please speak to the experts. It will help.

Anton Beneslavskiy

28/07/2026

If the landscape is the problem… why are we only changing the fire trucks and airtankers?

Don't get us wrong.
Firefighters and aerial firefighting are essential. They save lives, protect communities and remain indispensable during extreme wildfire events.

But if every summer becomes more destructive than the last, we should ask ourselves a simple question:

Are we investing as much in preventing catastrophic wildfires as we are in fighting them?

A more powerful fire engine cannot change an overgrown landscape.

An additional airtanker cannot remove decades of accumulated fuel.

And no suppression system—no matter how advanced—can compensate for a lack of prevention.

Technology matters.

But resilient landscapes matter even more.
Perhaps it's time to invest as much in what happens before the first ignition as we do after.

Learn to live with fire.