València (EFE).- Increasing investment in prevention and clearing the mountains are some of the recipes proposed by the candidates for the Presidency of the Generalitat who are running in the regional elections on May 28 to deal with large forest fires.
As they explained to EFE, other of their proposals involve providing forest firefighters with sufficient means and equipment, increasing public funds dedicated to sustainable forest management, promoting the mosaic landscape with crops that favor it, or improving coordination .
PSPV-PSOE
The president of the Generalitat and socialist candidate for re-election, Ximo Puig, defends continuing to do what, according to him, the Consell is already doing: increasing all prevention measures, placing more reinforcement units and carrying out more reconnaissance flights.
“We have gone from 43 to 500 towns with a fire-fighting plan,” he stresses, adding that “the best shield against fire is that the territory is populated and the land cultivated.”
“Climate change is evident and each one of us has to contribute to protect the only planet we have. Because there is no planet B,” she points out.
PP
For the PP candidate, Carlos Mazón, the most urgent thing is to “clean up the mountains” because “a mountain full of dry branches and weeds is fuel for the summer, and last August we witnessed this with the large fires in Bejís and the Vall d’Ebo”.
In addition, he adds, “we must make it easier for farmers and hunters to carry out their work, because they are a fundamental part of the maintenance of the mountains” and it would also be necessary to “provide forest firefighters with sufficient means and equipment.”
citizens
From Ciudadanos, his candidate for the Generalitat, Mamen Peris, believes that the first is “prevention and extinction, which must be managed jointly” and the second, the management of the mountain, which ranges from cleaning it to making firebreaks, promoting the mosaic landscape with crops that favor it and value the use of biomass.
commitment
The Compromís candidate, Joan Baldoví, is committed to continuing to increase investment in fire prevention and forest management, as has been done in recent years, and to putting all the resources and aid so that municipalities and forest owners on private farms can clean and maintain these spaces.
He also advocates deploying the Valencian law to combat climate change, because it is evidence that the climate crisis is causing more virulent and common forest fires.
Vox
The proposals of the Vox candidate, Carlos Flores, are to improve coordination between the fire departments, and between them and the other institutions involved, directly or indirectly, in the fight against fire, as well as to recover the link between people and their land.
“Only when the forest is useful is when we really get involved in its maintenance. The idea that the more inaccessible the forest is, the better it is safeguarded, has been proven wrong,” she says.
United We Can
For the second vice president of the Consell and Unides Podem candidate, Héctor Illueca, “the most obvious and main measure” is the increase in investment in fire prevention and public funds dedicated to the sustainable management of forests and masses forestry.
It is also committed to investing “in a courageous and determined manner in the execution of the Local Plans for the Prevention of Forest Fires”, and to increase services, resources and jobs in the rural world to meet the main needs of the Valencian forests. .