Fires that swept through the Jerusalem Hills on Remembrance Day caused significant damage. The fire concentrated in Canada Park is thought to have burned through approximately 20,000 dunams, including 10,000 dunams of woodlands managed by KKL-JNF.
An earlier fire burned through 6,000 dunams, 4,000 of which are KKL-JNF-managed forests. Nearly two-thirds of the burned areas in both fires were completely consumed in the flames and will require long-term ecological restoration, according to KKL-JNF.
Sarah Ben-Nun, legal correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, and Tamar Uriel-Beeri, editor in chief of The Jerusalem Report, sat down with David Soucy, Founder of Israel Tree Service.
Soucy explains the risk factors leading up to the fires, why the fires happened, and what the government must do now to prevent additional blazes and combat climate change. He will discuss how a lack of biodiversity and forest upkeep contributed to the fires.