As wildfires blazed in southern Italy this week, authorities probing for arson discovered a grisly clue: cats “with flammable-soaked rags tied to their tails.”
“These animals were released into the fields, running around and spreading the fire,” stated Domenico Costarella of Calabria’s Civil Protection Agency in a video posted on Facebook on Tuesday. He added that different items of proof additionally pointed to arson, together with candles lit amongst flammable rags and delayed ignition gadgets.
Firefighters are nonetheless working to contain blazes round Calabria’s Pollino National Park, in accordance to Italian broadcaster RAI, which reported Wednesday that firefighting groups have accomplished greater than 160 missions inside Calabria in the previous 24 hours.
According to NCS’s Italian affiliate SkyTG24, the Italian Association for the Defense of Animals and the Environment has filed a prison grievance and provided a 1,000 euro reward for info on who could have set the cats alight.
Europe has been consumed by a nasty fire season this year, in accordance to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). A moist winter offered new vegetation, a lot of which grew to become tinder for fires after three successive summer time heatwaves. While 2026 has been a better year for fires in Europe total, the continent’s hearth season continues to be above the 20-year common, EFFIS stated in a each day bulletin.
Using cats to unfold hearth shouldn’t be a brand new phenomenon in southern Italy. In 2016, authorities in Sicily blamed the mob for utilizing cats to begin forest fires in a nationwide park. The subsequent 12 months, officials stated the identical tactic was used to set fires exterior of Naples, close to Mount Vesuvius.
UC Berkeley researcher Lauren Pearson instructed NCS final 12 months that there’s proof that Mafia teams usually set fires to acquire management of territory, usually shopping for land at a premium in the aftermath.
In latest years, Pearson stated, some organized crime teams have taken benefit of Italy’s clear vitality transition; one farmer who testified to an anti-Mafia fee in 2022 stated he was approached by photo voltaic panel corporations to promote his land after it had been burned.
Sergio Nazzaro, a journalist and former spokesman for the president of the Anti-Mafia Parliamentary Commission, stated that Mafia teams exploit emergencies by means of entrance organizations, “from the labor force that sets the fire to the concession to build on burned land.”
In Calabria, Costarella of the Civil Protection Department warned that stopping arson would take a societal shift.
“We are getting back to work and returning to our posts, but we need a shift in mindset,” he stated. “These are inhumane acts. Sadly, men are their own worst enemies.”