why we can’t ‘just’ split big forests into multiple blocks so when a block burns it doesn’t spread through the whole forest.

Question

Well the title is the question.
With ‘split’ I mean create some space between blocks where fire has nothing to travel to the next block to spread.

I imagine that actions like dropping water with helicopters would also be unnecessary since we could ‘give up’ a burning block and then the fire would be over.

Or am I too naive about it?

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

We used to do a lot of stuff similar to that, controlled burns, proper cutting and spacing of the forest, allowing cattle to graze the vegetation down but we stopped doing it and now the fires are getting worse and worse every year. Short answer is the the people in charge thinks it looks bad to do all of that stuff. We also have issues over here with the clean air authority that like to prohibit controlled burns during the safest time of year to do it thus allowing the fire to get out of control in the summer.