Cultural Anthropology blog

 India Riley

Mr.Roddy

IHSS

September 2, 2021

Anthropology blog

    My article was about wildfires. All across the Mediterranean fires are increasingly becoming larger, and more dangerous. This could be due to many different causes, the most likely is human inflicted. Because of climate change the chances of a fire have significantly increased. While farming is practical and beneficial for food, most farming strategies have become more harmful than good for our environment. The chemical pesticides and fertilizers are extremely flammable, with just one spark the entire field could burst into flame within minutes. When dedicating a large amount of land to farmland or cattle range, its safe to assume that at some point that will be engulfed in a fire. Rarely a field could emerge to flames even if a human hasn't touched it, because plants release so much oxygen, too much of any sort of plant could combust to flames during drought seasons or lightning storms significantly easier than if they were spread apart. Humans have learned to alter and manually evolve plants to make them more abundant and resourceful, causing them to not evolve by themselves. Thus causing there abilities to adapt in order to survive weak against things like wildfires. 9

    In Monte Pisano, Italy, the farmers have destroyed all fires sensitive plants and trees, and have added fire resistant trees like fir, and certain oak breeds to surround there farmland. They also added fire breakers to surround the land, short fire resilient grasses, and keep all fuel off the area. The country of Italy was very opposed to Agropastoral, keeping livestock and crops, until the late nineteenth century. It wasn't until 1960, when what used to be small separated wildfires, became annual wildfires destroying more land than before, that they realized it would be more beneficial to not only themselves but also the environment. By putting the cattle and crops together, they have to add less prohibitions around there land in order to prevent large fires. 

    While these accommodations where helpful, and necessary, its going to become increasingly more difficult to make these if we continue to alter and manually evolve our plants.