TREPUZZI, Italy (CN) — The catastrophic Xylella fastidiosa olive tree epidemic just keeps getting worse for the ancient olive oil makers of Italy's Salento region.
A new chapter in this tragedy has struck: Fires, many of them likely set by arsonists, are destroying what remains of thousands of olive trees mortally infected by an olive tree strain of the Xylella fastidiosa, a dangerous bacterium native to Central America and threatening hundreds of species of plants around the world.
This is the second summer in a row where Xylella-infected olive trees are going up in flames in Salento, adding a dramatic and even hellish twist to a disaster that was already nearly incomprehensible for the people here.
Salvatore Mongiò, an olive mill owner and grower in Trepuzzi, is nearly the only person left in his town who makes olive oil. With a shake of his head, he said the fires are awful.
“We've moved on to the phase of destruction," he said.
The mass death of olives is deeply emotional and complicated for this part of Italy because the southern Apulia region historically was Italy's most productive olive oil region. Olive oil is central to life, as it was for the Greeks, Phoenicians and Byzantines who planted olives centuries ago in Salento, an Apulia sub-peninsula of the Italian peninsula and often referred to as the “heel” of the “boot.”
Mongiò drove slowly through the charred olive groves in the vicinity of Trepuzzi.
“Look here, this burned a couple of days ago,” he said, nodding at blackened carcasses of olive trees on the edge of town.
Ghostly groves extended for as far as the eye could see. He drove on ponderously.
“These trees were beautiful three years ago,” he said, passing a grove of leafless centuries-old trees, all of them dead or dying though spared still from fires. “They were vigorous, green, with foliage.”
This “phase of destruction,” as Mongiò calls the pyromania taking place all around him, is painful.
“Not almost, every day there have been fires,” he said. “It's vandalism, let's be clear. This should not be happening to the countryside.”
Systematic fires became a feature of the Xylella disaster last summer, but this year the pace of fires has picked up and local newspapers seem to be unable to keep up with all the reports of burning olives.
Few if any people have been arrested, according to news reports. Officials with Apulia's regional government did not immediately return messages seeking comment about the fires.
Donato Boscia, a plant and Xylella researcher with the National Research Council of Italy, said most of the fires are lit by people.
“There are only a few cases of so-called 'auto-combustion,'” Boscia said in a telephone interview. “A fire erupts because someone has lit a match somewhere.”
It's a cruel sight to see the blackened groves around Trepuzzi, one of several areas in the provinces of Lecce and Brindisi hit hard by arsonists. Burnt trunks are toppled over on ground, split in two, three and four pieces.
Mongiò said people evidently see burning trees as an effective way to clear the land of Xylella-infected trees.
“When an olive tree catches on fire, it burns from the inside for days,” he said. “I saw some old trees catch on fire and the firemen doused the trees from morning to evening. The next day, the tree was still burning.”
Removing the millions of dead olive trees in Salento has proven problematic and costly. Most farmers have left their Xylella-hit trees standing right where they are, some waiting for the state to pay for their removal, others hoping their trees will miraculously come back to life. Trees are also extirpated by companies that use the wood in biomass-burning energy plants. Other firms remove trees to sell as firewood.
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