At the beginning of summer, we truly ventured into the forests. The WILDFIRE CE project within the Central Europe 2021-2027 programme, which addresses the risk of wildfires, had just started. For this purpose, various border regions, communities, and landscapes from Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Italy, and the Czech Republic have come together to enable a more comprehensive, focused, and inclusive approach to managing this growing threat through cross-border cooperation, knowledge exchange, and shared experience.
On June 11 and 12, we visited the Saxon-Bohemian Switzerland National Park, more precisely two national parks: the Bohemian Switzerland National Park in the Czech Republic and the Saxon Switzerland National Park in Germany, which together form a unified transboundary nature reserve. In July 2022, this area suffered significant damage when a large wildfire broke out, affecting some 3,000 hectares of forest. During this visit, the lead partner, the Saxon State Ministry for Regional Development, aimed to present the issue of cross-border wildfires and ways of addressing them. This is also the central goal of the WILDFIRE CE project: to enable border regions to prepare for, respond to, and adapt to the increasing risk of wildfires caused by climate change. We plan to achieve this by raising awareness among local and regional authorities about available methods and knowledge to reduce and adapt to current and future fire risks. The acquired knowledge will also be integrated into spatial planning development and management. To ensure the effectiveness of the project’s results and wildfire prevention, it will be crucial to involve the public, experts such as foresters and land managers, as well as local and regional authorities, including firefighters. In practice, cooperation will also come to life in four pilot areas: the already mentioned Saxon-Bohemian Switzerland on the southeast of Germany and northwest of the Czech Republic, the Czech district of Znojmo on the border with Upper and Lower Austria, the border area between Friuli Venezia Giulia and Carinthia in Austria, and the border between Gorizia and Friuli Venezia Giulia, where project participants will also ‘face’ a cross-border wildfire in a real setting.