Pilot Application of Prescribed Burning for Forest Fire Prevention and Biodiversity Conservation
Within the context of SEMEDFIRE’s planned actions and tasks, the 5th Hands-On-Training and 1st Field Exercise of the project were conducted within the week of 10 to 14 March 2025, with the visit of fire management experts from the SEMEDFIRE Advanced Partners Pau Costa Foundation.
The pilot-implementation of Prescribed burning, an internationally recognised practice implemented with strict safety protocols, was part of the activities of the SEMEDFIRE “South-Eastern Mediterranean Excellence-Development in Fire Research” project, which is funded by the European Commission via the Horizon Europe WIDERA Twinning Grant Agreement no. 101079337. Since its beginning, SEMEDFIRE has been placed under the Auspices of the Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development and the Environment (MARDE) of the Republic of Cyprus, Dr. Maria Panayiotou.
As such, the Department of Forests (DoF) of the MARDE with SEMEDFIRE’s project Coordinator and Widening Institution; CERIDES of the European University Cyprus (EUC-CERIDES), carried out, pioneering it for the first time: a prescribed burning application in a forest area of Cyprus, taking all necessary strict safety measures, under the supervision of experts from SEMEDFIRE’s Advanced Partner Pau Costa Foundation. This action was implemented by EUC-CERIDES in collaboration with the Department of Forests, in the framework of the pilot implementation of an innovative fuel management tool for the prevention and treatment of forest fires.
DoF and CERIDES issued a joint press-release on the activity, for which you may find more at: DoF’s website (in Greek) and SEMEDFIRE’s website (in English).
