"This Spring Alone: 497 Wildfires and 4,654 Hectares of Forest Burned"

This spring, a total of 497 wildfires occurred nationwide, causing damage to 4,654 hectares of forest area. The forestry authorities plan to establish and implement strategies for wildfire prevention and minimizing damage.

The Korea Forest Service's super-large helicopter is demonstrating the wildfire suppression process. Photo by Korea Forest Service

On the 17th, the Korea Forest Service announced the spring wildfire status report and revealed future response strategies, including blocking wildfire causes, strengthening ground and aerial firefighting capabilities, and restoration plans for large wildfire-damaged areas.

As fundamental wildfire prevention measures, the Korea Forest Service proposed ▲removing causes of burning by collecting and shredding forest residues directly at sites ▲creating forests resistant to wildfires through wildfire prevention forest management ▲eliminating fuel around power transmission lines to block wildfire causes.

Additionally, the strategy focuses on enhancing wildfire monitoring capabilities using artificial intelligence and information and communication technologies, and creating conditions for early wildfire suppression by expanding special wildfire disaster firefighting teams, high-performance wildfire firefighting vehicles, and wildfire firefighting forest roads.

In particular, considering the recent trend of simultaneous wildfires occurring nationwide with rapidly spreading flames and increasing in scale, efforts will be concentrated on securing additional aerial firefighting resources such as ultra-large firefighting helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to establish a three-dimensional wildfire suppression system both on the ground and in the air.

For forest restoration in wildfire-affected areas, after conducting detailed surveys to assess the damage status, opinions from forest owners and stakeholders will be collected to establish a reasonable restoration plan acceptable to the majority. Restoration activities will be carried out in stages and annually according to the conditions of each wildfire-damaged area, distinguishing between emergency logging, landslide prevention, afforestation restoration, natural restoration, and ecological restoration.

Nam Sung-hyun, Administrator of the Korea Forest Service, stated, “We will do our best to minimize wildfire damage by preparing response strategies according to the causes of wildfire occurrence,” and added, “Regarding wildfire-affected areas, we will strive to derive reasonable restoration measures that can enhance economic, socio-cultural, and environmental values through expert group consultations and procedures to gather opinions from forest owners and residents.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.