But, this year, while there have been a few fires, it's not as severe as last year. The minister says this is as a result of many factors, but one of them being that they prepared. He explained how.

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
"I believe that one we are better prepared, we learned some of our lessons and last year's wildfires were particular because remember the year before we had the hurricane and when the hurricane passed through it broke up a lot of trees and limbs within the forest reserves and natural reserves. aAd so we saw those broadleaf Forests that were broken up and so we knew that a year later it would have served as fuel for wildfires and that's exactly what happened. But also we have been doing a better job through the forest department to control those fires that could possibly happen. In the Pine Ridge for example, we started earlier we started doing cool burns, as a matter of fact up to last week we are still doing some burns in the pine ridge area. The Ministry of Agriculture has also been keen in trying to control the amount of permits that have been issued for agriculture burns so that has all contributed. I also think we had a lot of rainfall to the end of February this year so there was still a little bit of moisture underground, beneath the canopy so that has also helped to where we can see less fires this year."