France's forest management may need to change to prevent more wildfires in Les Landes

PARIS (AP) — History keeps repeating itself in the smoldering forests of southwest France, now ash-covered and charred.

Devastated by previous blazes in 2022 and 1949, when 82 people died, the largest human-made woodland in Western Europe has again been ravaged by wildfires which burned an area four times the size of Paris.

The forests of Les Landes — covering 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles) — were created in the 19th century for timber and resin production. They comprise endless rows of pines in neat, close lines, which works against them in a wildfire, with flames jumping easily from one tree to another.

Blazes loom as a growing danger for the timberland because Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent. But climate change isn't its sole vulnerability, experts say. They also point to the very nature of such industrial plantation, whose origins date back to the Second French Empire.

The latest disaster is forcing a rethink in France about how to better prepare and manage forest expanses to cope with hotter, drier, more fire-prone conditions made worse by human-caused climate change — from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

President Emmanuel Macron said a different kind of forest should be replanted.

“The structural conditions created by climate change, under which we will have to live, have changed,” he said. “So has the pressure from housing and tourism.”

Maritime pine is considered relatively fire-resistant due to its thick bark and ability to regenerate naturally. But experts believe its monoculture increases risk. Single-species forests of conifers are drier than mixed forests of broadleaf trees and conifers, favoring flames.

“In a healthy, diverse forest there are multiple tree species, different age classes and several layers of vegetation, from ground plants and shrubs to mature trees such as oaks and beeches,” says Nathalie Naulet, an expert in forestry and agriculture. “In these ecosystems, less than 3% of the sun’s radiation reaches the forest floor.”

In Les Landes, that layered structure does not exist.

“Without a protective canopy, the soil heats up and dries out,” Naulet said. “The top few centimeters of soil, which should normally consist of water-rich humus, become dry and impoverished. In many places, humus has virtually disappeared.”

Broadleaf trees retain more moisture, better for resisting fire. Pine trees coat the forest floor with mounds of flammable dead leaves that are springy underfoot but which can smolder long after a blaze.

Fire crews and citizens are now dousing smoking embers — a job that could take weeks.

“No matter how much we try to extinguish it, re-extinguish it, re-extinguish it, it keeps restarting all the time,” said Jean-Francois Pauner, 64, a resident helping the effort.

Resinous pine cones can also ignite and be hurled hundreds of meters by wind, helping fire spread.

“You end up with fires breaking out in every direction,” Naulet said. “Add heat and drought, and you get the picture.”

Les Landes’ forests developed following a 1857 law on the drainage and cultivation of the Landes de Gascogne. Ruler Napoleon III ordered municipalities to sow maritime pines and sell off the heathlands, regarded as unproductive.

Marshland was transformed into productive forest. The last shepherds who tended their flocks while walking on stilts disappeared. The forest displaced peasants. They found work in the timber industry and the harvesting of pine resin. The forest’s main purpose now is timber production.

More than 90% of the forest area in Les Landes is privately owned, with 75% held by just 20% of landowners. The National Forest Office and local municipalities manage the remainder.

According to the Southwest Foresters’ Association, which represents more than 65% of the privately owned forest in the region, the sector supports an estimated 60,000 jobs and generates more than 10 billion euros ($11.5 billion) in annual revenue.

Changing the way the Landes forests are managed will require negotiations between the timber industry, owners, and public authorities. If monoculture is partially abandoned in certain areas, financial compensation will be necessary.

Nicolas Lafon, the association's president, said rebuilding will require “financial resources commensurate with the scale of the challenge.”

“Forest owners reject any attempt to portray them as being responsible for a disaster of which they are the primary victims,” he said. “They now expect the French government, elected officials, and all public stakeholders to implement a truly ambitious, coherent, and long-term national forest policy.”

The national rethink on forests is also extending to wildlife. An online petition calling for a hunting moratorium in burned woodlands has gathered more than 300,000 signatories.

Geographer Arthur Guérin-Turcq says that when fires start in the Landes, they can spread without encountering breaks until they reach villages.

“It is therefore necessary to create buffer zones around settlements,” he said. Other possible solutions could include adding wetlands, more farmland or more businesses that aren’t so fire-prone.

Another option is to introduce more broadleaf trees. But transforming the entire forested area is a tall order in poor soils, said Guérin-Turcq, who wrote a report on the 2022 wildfires that displaced 37,000 people and destroyed 320 square kilometers (124 square miles) of forest.

Bruno Lafon, regional president of the Forest Fire Defense Association, called for stronger wildfire prevention.

“We need larger, well-maintained firebreaks, even if that means sacrificing 1,000 or 2,000 hectares,” he said. “Otherwise, we risk losing the Landes forest.”

Mark Carlson in Lanton, France, contributed.

A picture taken from the French Civil Security rescue coordination helicopter shows areas burned by wildfiresnear Le Porge, France, Firday, July 31, 2026. (Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool Photo via AP)

Firefighters look at an amphibious firefighting aircraft as they battle fires near Lege-Cap-Ferret, southwestern France, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

FILE - A plane releases fire retardant as it flies over a forest near Blagon, during wildfires in southwestern France, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva, File)

A firefighting crew hose down a smoldering forest near Lauros, during wildfires in southwestern France, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

The light flows through a charred forest near Ares, during wildfires in southwestern France, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

A firefighter creates a controlled burn area to contain a fire near Lege-Cap-Ferret, during wildfires in southwestern France, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is swinging between gains and losses on Friday, as Wall Street's wildJuly remains rocky. Amazon is leaping, but Apple is sinking, and rising oil prices are adding to worries about inflation already squeezing the bond market.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% after veering between an earlier gain of 0.7% and drop of 0.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 80 points, or 0.2%, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher after briefly losing all of an early 1.3% jump.

The market initially seemed to be heading for healthy gains as Amazon leaped 15% after reporting much stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its profit more than tripled from a year earlier, thanks in part to an acceleration of growth in its cloud computing business.

Analysts said that could be a signal Amazon’s huge investments in artificial-intelligence technology are paying off, and Amazon increased its forecast for how much it will spend on investments this year.

The stock reaction was similar to what Microsoft got a day before, when it soared to its best day in nearly 18 years on signals that its AI investments may also be yielding higher profits.

Worries have been high on Wall Street that companies pouring billions of dollars into AI data centers may not get enough profit and productivity to make all the investments worth it. That weighed on the broad U.S. stock market, causing its sharp swings throughout July, along with worries that stock prices shot too high for companies selling the processors and computer memory that such “hyperscalers” are scrambling to buy.

Chipmakers swung sharply again on Friday. Micron Technology, for example, went from an early jump of 6.4% to a loss of 5.3% before trimming its fall to 3.7%.

More firmly on the losing end of Wall Street was Apple, which dropped 9.2% despite reporting stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Its forecast for growth in the current quarter fell short of expectations, which executives pinned on a supply crunch in components getting vacuumed up in the AI boom.

Also pressuring stocks was another rise in oil prices as uncertainty continues about when the war with Iran will allow crude to flow freely again from the Middle East.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude rose 2.1% to $88.68 after careening between $72 and $102 earlier in July.

Higher oil prices have pushed the cost for a gallon of regular gasoline to an average of nearly $4.11 across the United States, up from $3.85 a month ago, according to AAA. More expensive oil also puts upward pressure on prices for virtually every product that rides on a ship, plane or truck before it gets to a customer.

The worries about inflation sent yields in the bond market even higher.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury jumped to 4.73% from 4.68% late Thursday and from just 3.97% before the war with Iran sent oil prices shooting higher. That's a notable move for the bond market, and the yield moves higher when investors' expectations for inflation, economic growth and other factors in upcoming years are rising.

The leap has already sent the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate to its highest level in a year.

Longer-term yields jumped on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve's chair, Kevin Warsh, promised again to get inflation back down to 2% but did not say how he plans to get it there. The Fed voted again to keep its main interest rate steady on Wednesday, even though inflation continues to remain well above 2%.

Higher interest rates could keep a lid on inflation, but they could also slow the economy and undercut prices for stocks and other investments. President Donald Trump, who nominated Warsh to lead the Fed, has lobbied for lower interest rates instead of higher.

Warsh has clearly told financial markets that he does not want to give hints about what the Fed will do with interest rates, saying he wants to get direct, “unfiltered” messages from them rather than echoes back of what the Fed has suggested.

But “without clarifying why action was or wasn’t taken already, it’s hard to see how statements about being committed to hitting its inflation target aren’t just a bluff,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.

“The Fed is facing a growing credibility problem,” economists at Bank of America wrote in a report. Unless data comes in showing less pressure on inflation in the interim, “it is imperative for the Fed to pass the September test by hiking rates and delivering an internally consistent narrative.”

In stock markets abroad, the swings were even wilder for chip stocks.

Seoul’s Kospi index soared 17.9% for its best day in history. The index is dominated by two tech giants, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which both surged at least 26.8% on Friday.

The Kospi, though, still lost 22% in July despite Friday’s historic move. That’s after it more than doubled in the first six months of the year.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

Specialist Mark Fitzgerald works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

An employee walks past near the screen showing the SK Hynix stock price at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A dealer walks past near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

People wait to cross a street near an electronic board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks past an electronic board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks past an electronic board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person stands near an electronic board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

People stand in front of the electronic board showing Japanese Yen and U.S. Dollar exchange rate at a securities firm Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

FILE - A Microsoft logo is seen on a screen as people listen at an event at Microsoft headquarters, May 20, 2024, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)

The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader talks on the phone at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)