With wildfires raging around the world, prescribed burns, a practice of intentional burning to clean away dry grasses and other flammable materials before a wildfire could occur, have been repeatedly proposed to prevent fire risks. 

CGTN spoke to fire experts from Australia, Canada and the United States to discuss how prescribed burns can reduce wildfire risk and the problems they have.

"Prescribed fire basically burns where you're just trying to remove vegetation that would be available to burn in an out-of-control fire event," said Amy Cardinal Christianson, an Indigenous fire specialist at Parks Canada Agency.

Starting fires properly can improve natural fire resilience and thus reduce wildfires. "We can actually mitigate a lot of those climate impacts by restoring fire resilience and by restoring fire as a process," said Lenya N. Quinn-Davidson, an area fire advisor in the U.S. 

However, if prescribed burns are not well-planned, they can lead to more serious environmental problems, such as fire escape, smoke pollution and biodiversity loss. 

Check out the episodes of the One Minute With series: Wildfires are rampaging. Some are calling for prescribed burns to help and Prescribed burns could reduce wildfires, but risks remain.

About 'One Minute With' series

CGTN Nature talks to experts from across the world about life-changing environmental issues, such as climate change, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss, and learns about possible solutions. "One Minute With" condenses the interview highlights into short videos to get to the heart of the argument fast. For in-depth discussions on each topic, stay tuned for our Environment Buzzword series!

(Cover image designed by CGTN's Jia Jieqiong and Yin Yating)

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at nature@cgtn.com.)