Marcos Aerospace, a Greek aerospace startup based in Athens, has just launched Quencher, an autonomous amphibious aircraft currently in what the company is describing as “the preliminary design phase.”

With a 4,500-litre water capacity, Quencher is designed to conduct high-frequency aerial firefighting operations both day and night. Marcos Aerospace says patent application covering the platform’s core innovations have been filed.

The company announcement describes Quencher as “a deep-tech aerial firefighting platform”.

“Quencher integrates AI-assisted navigation, automated mission management, autonomous flight controls, and swarm coordination capability. The aircraft is optimized for continuous scooping operations from seas and lakes, as well as rapid refilling at designated ground stations, enabling relentless, around-the-clock initial attack and wildfire suppression,” according to the media release.

“Quencher is not merely a new aircraft; it represents a paradigm shift and a new category in aerial firefighting,” said Marcos Caramalengos, aerospace engineer and founder of Marcos Aerospace.

The Marcos Aerospace website provides some more detail. One operator can coordinate up to five Quencher aircraft simultaneously.  Maximum speed is 440km/h, cruise speed is 360 km/h, built around a Pratt and Whitney PW127 turboprop engine.

A clarification of its current status on the website shows the concept is still in its very early days: “Quencher is under development. The aircraft, systems, and operational concepts described on this site reflect the current design intent and program direction. Certification, testing, and operational deployment will follow applicable regulatory and safety requirements.”

Quencher is in Pre-Production Development Phase (2026–2029), which includes the design, engineering, and certification of the Quencher aircraft ahead of first production and commercial launch.

Marcos Aerospace says it is now open to strategic partnerships and discussions with civil protection authorities, industry stakeholders, and investors.

Elevated fire weather conditions are set across the Southwest and southern Great Basin regions due to strong winds, dry conditions and very warm temperatures, according to the Center’s forecasts. Much of the Southwest, Great Basin, and far north are expected to experience significant wildland fire potential throughout June, according to the Center’s outlooks.

Much of Arizona, Utah and southeast Nevada specifically are at high risk of wildfire ignitions this week, mainly due to windy conditions, data from the Center’s daily forecasts showed.

“Minimum relative humidity will fall to 5-15% across Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, with southwest winds 10-20 mph and gusts to 30-35 mph across exposed terrain and ridges, with the strongest winds in southern Nevada, southwest Utah, and northwest Arizona,” Center officials said.

Wildfire crews have already been busier than usual this year. More than 31,511 fires have burned almost 2.5 million acres nationwide, which are above the 10-year averages of 22,270 fires and 1.27 million acres, according to the Center.

Peak wildfire season nears as Western states are expected to face water shortages due to extremely low streamflows throughout the spring, according to the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“Many of the rivers are likely to experience well-below median streamflows, which may rival the lowest flows on record for the region,” the Service said in a previous Water and Climate Update. “Water shortages are anticipated in many locations, especially for entities that rely on surface streamflow water, without the benefit of having access to stored reservoir water.”

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Record-low water shortages expected ahead of very active US wildfire season

The low streamflows were blamed primarily on record-low snowpack during the winter months, which also melted weeks earlier than normal. The “unprecedented” snowpack levels were the lowest in 40 years, and researchers said the only way extreme fire chances could be reduced was through a “major switch” in circulation patterns. So far, there’s nothing in season forecasts or weather models that indicate such a switch is on its way.

The U.S. House Committee on Appropriations submitted its funding plan for the Department of the Interior, the environment and related agencies this week, with a specific focus on the fire service. Lawmakers said the funding was in line with the Trump Administration’s proposal to unify the DoI’s firefighting activities.

The nearly $1.2 billion in proposed funding for the Wildland Fire Service is a fraction of the original $6.5 billion proposed for the service in the 2026 appropriations act, which was blocked by a bipartisan group of Senators. Lawmakers were allegedly only able to get the $1.2 billion by significantly cutting the funding of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“In order to fund these priorities at necessary levels, the Committee has reduced funding for the majority of accounts in the bill,” lawmakers said in their funding report. “This includes a reduction of $1,781,584,000, or 20 percent, reduction to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) below the fiscal year 2026 enacted level.”

The Republican and Democratic Senators who previously blocked the funding said they couldn’t endorse the consolidation of federal wildland firefighting forces from both the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service, which manages more than two-thirds of the nation’s firefighting resources, into a single agency. They said such a combination of resources could only be approved by an act of Congress, and ordered the agency to conduct a study on the feasibility of such a consolidation.

The House Committee’s members acknowledged the study, and said the Trump Administration is in the process of contracting with an independent research organization to complete the study.

The funding proposal addressed numerous other wildland fire subjects, including:

• $2.6 billion for wildland fire management under the U.S. Forest Service.
• $185 million for hazardous fuels management activities, including $18 million for the Community Wood Energy Program’s sawmilling equipment.
• $5 million for forest restoration and seedling replanting activities, specifically in the Pacific Region.
• $3 million for Wildland Urban Interface fire research.
• $2.5 million for purchasing generators for Tribal Health Programs to mitigate issues for de-energization protocols during wildfires.
• $1.6 million to the Forest Service for AI wildfire modeling research near the National Interagency Fire Center.

Click here to read the full report and the full funding bill.

The announcement comes as the World Meteorological Organisation issued a Global Seasonal Climate Update that, while highlighting the development of a strong El Nino around the Pacific, also warns of hot, dry conditions elsewhere.

“For the June-July-August season, forecasts project a nearly universal dominance of above-normal temperatures in nearly all parts of the globe,” the WMO says.

The late May “heat dome” over Western Europe has eased this week but the early seasonal heatwave may be the first taste of a long, hot summer.  

The European Commission announcement follows a record 2025 season where 1 million hectares across Europe were burned. Its 2026 pre-positioning program includes:

• 777 firefighters from 14 countries to be deployed across high-risk areas in 6 countries in the south of Europe
• 22 firefighting airplanes and 5 helicopters from the EU fleet to support countries under pressure
• 21 certified teams ready to intervene all over Europe 

As the season progresses, the placement of these resources will be based on daily wildfire risk forecasts from the European Forest Fire Information System and the EU satellite Copernicus.

In addition, the EU is launching a new European regional firefighting station in Cyprus this year to strengthen wildfire preparedness and response capacities across Europe and the South Mediterranean region. The station will have the capacity to pre-position 6 aircraft and host trainings for civil protection practitioners.

The announcement is consistent with the March release of the new comprehensive EU strategy on wildfire management.

An overview of the 2026 summer fleet supported by the EU Civil Protection Mechanism:

• Croatia: Two medium amphibious airplanes.
• Cyprus: Two light airplanes (in addition to four light airplanes funded by other EU instruments).
• Czechia: Two helicopters.
• France: Four medium amphibious airplanes and one helicopter.
• Greece: Four medium amphibious airplanes.
• Italy: Two medium amphibious airplanes.
• North Macedonia: Two light airplanes.
• Portugal: Two light airplanes.
• Romania: One helicopter.
• Slovakia: One helicopter.
• Spain: Two medium amphibious airplanes.
• Sweden: Two light airplanes.

IAWF Vice President Ciaran Nugent is hosting a small display outdoors in the Wildfire Camp with a small group of colleagues.

For the first time in its 70-year history the large Interschutz fire and rescue services trade fair in Germany features a zone dedicated to wildfire and it is great for the IAWF to be a part of it.

Wildfire Camp will display around 20 companies and other organizations on early detection, prevention and suppression of wildfires. While small in relation to the rest of the trade fair, the arrival of Wildfire Camp signals a growing acceptance of wildland fire as an essential part of overall fire management planning and resourcing in Europe.

The Interschutz fire and rescue services trade fair is huge – around 1750 exhibitors from 55 countries are in Hannover from 1-6 June 2026. The exhibition space fill nine halls plus outdoor displays and in the past has attracted up to 150,000 visitors.

Wildfire Camp is the work of four main players – Bosch Building Technologies, the European Forest Institute (EFI), @fire, and IMBOS e.V, bringing together science, emergency responders, and technology providers.

The International Association of Wildland Fire is hosting a stand in the Wildfire Camp that will also include CAL FIRE, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Airbus, Drager, Husqvarna, OroraTech, Vallfirest, Waterax and others.

Reflecting the desire to not just promote hardware and other services, the Wildfire Camp has a strong emphasis on understanding wildfire in a European context and learning from international experts. In addition to the outdoor demos there is a program of expert presentations and panel discussions into operational strategies, early detection technologies, prevention measures by the European Forest Institute.

See more information about the WildfireCamp@INTERSCHUTZ, including all participating companies,

Visit the International Association of Wildland Fire at Interschutz 2026 in the Open-air section of the Wildfire Camp, stand D90 (29).

At the global scale, land area burnt by wildfires in 2025 was nearly 828 million acres, which was the second-lowest on record since 2002 and around 16% below the average burned area of 2002 to 2024, according to the updated annual report published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. Last year also had the third-lowest total carbon dioxide emissions since 2002, around 12% below the 2002-2024 emissions average. And yet, wildfires killed more than 90 people and forced over 300,000 evacuations.

Researchers said the low burned area total in the midst of persistent extreme wildfires is a hallmark of our current era, especially in areas of social and economic inequality. The key points of the report included:

• Emissions from Canada’s boreal forest wildfires from between 2023 and 2025 exceeded the combined emissions of the preceding 15 years
• Los Angeles’ wildfires in January ranked as the fifth most costly natural disaster in world history
• The United Kingdom experienced its first “megafire” exceeding 25,000 acres as wildfires throughout Europe were fueled by widespread drought and heat extremes

“A catalogue of extreme wildfires in 2025 continues to demonstrate that devastating consequences are not governed by area burned alone…Although the year’s most damaging events did not always coincide with exceptional total area burned, they produced acute societally disastrous outcomes,” the researchers said in the report. “Overall, the frequency of extreme fires in fuel-rich temperate and high-latitude systems, drought-driven fire activity in Europe, and disproportionate human impacts when extreme fires intersect with exposed communities are expected to further increase under continued warming.”

Researchers also warned that the database used in the report to establish the economic costs of major wildfires faces an “urgent finding crisis” following the cuts to USAID funding, according to the report’s lead author Matt Jones, from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK. Scientists who rely on the database warn that the consequences of its loss would be practical, immediate, and damaging, and are asking the public for support through the signing of an open letter.

“In an era of intensifying climate extremes, cascading risks, and compounding crises, reliable data are not a luxury,” the scientists said. “They are the infrastructure for informed decision-making. Disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, anticipatory action, and climate adaptation all require credible historical baselines.”

Click here to read the full petition.

A study recently published in the journal Science integrated and analyzed U.S. Forest Service data from 285 wildfires that intersected with prescribed burning and other fuel treatments across 11 western states from 2017 to 2023 to measure how much damage was averted due to the treatments. Researchers specifically used data on wildfire perimeters, locations of fuel treatments, suppression effort, fire simulation outputs, and key determinants of fire behavior.

They found that prescribed burning, along with other forest fuel treatments, avoided the staggering costs of large and severe wildfires. The study specifically found that every dollar the U.S. Forest Service spent on the tactics yielded $3.73 in benefits, saving over $2.7 billion between 2017 and 2023.

“A century of wildfire suppression policies has disrupted fire-adapted forest ecosystems, allowing fuel loads to accumulate, driving larger, more severe, and costlier wildfires,” the researchers said in the study. “Our findings demonstrate that fuel-reduction treatments are a cost-effective strategy to mitigate these impacts.”

Numerous commitments have been made to accelerate the pace and scale of fuel treatments across the United States, but they remain largely underutilized due to public pressure and risk aversion skewing toward fire suppression rather than prevention, according to the study. So, researchers worked to figure out how much of an economic benefit, if any, prescribed burn treatments created.

“The value of fuel treatments is often underappreciated by the public and policymakers, leading to persistent barriers in their broader implementation, including regulatory, funding, and capacity constraints,” the researchers said. “These dynamics reflect a classic public goods problem: despite their broad societal benefits, there are insufficient incentives to invest in prevention measures without clear, credible evidence of their benefits.”

Click here to get access to the full paper.

The Bonneville Power Administration released this year’s updated plan on Wednesday, with officials saying the plan had been “completely rewritten” to elevate the agency’s risk modeling improvements and operational changes. The agency was created by Congress in 1937 to deliver power from federally owned hydroelectric dam projects to the region. The 2026 plan is the fifth iteration since 2020.

The 2026 plan’s mitigation hierarchy is structured as follows:

• Transmission system maintenance and hardening
• Situational models and analysis focused on mitigation strategies
• Operational settings to ensure grid reliability and provide quick responses
• Power shutoffs during extreme weather to minimize ignition risks

The agency is currently facing major federal lawsuits for its alleged role in the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire in Oregon, which destroyed over 500 homes and left one person dead. A judge ruled in February that the agency intentionally destroyed evidence that could have tied it to the fire’s ignition, including moving trees off power lines after being told by wildfire investigators to stay out of the area.

“BPA willfully spoiled evidence because it moved trees of interest and allowed its contractors to materially disturb the ignition site without preserving evidence it knew it should, and could, preserve in reasonable anticipation of litigation,” the judge wrote.

Part of the agency’s new plan includes a restructured governance structure, which officials said fosters “agency wide coordination” and relies on external collaboration and accountability.

“BPA established a governance structure for wildfire mitigation that includes a cross-functional team to discuss and recommend strategies, a steering committee to provide approval authority and a sponsor advisory group to foster communication with executive level personnel,” the agency said in its new plan.

Click here to read the agency’s full 2026 plan.

A recently published analysis of 23 studies across 28 watersheds determined that the concentrations of numerous pollutants in waterways experienced significant increases for five years after a wildfire burns. Researchers found that the presence of heavy metals and other toxic chemical compounds in affected bodies of water was up to 66,000-fold above environmental standards.

“Most wildfires leave behind a barren, blackened landscape, and within this changed environment, important impacts can leave their mark,” the researchers said in a piece published in The Conversation. “Streams, rivers and water reservoirs receive a sudden pulse of ash, sediment and fire-suppressant chemicals washed off the land. For communities that depend on those waters for drinking water, wildfires can quickly become a long-term water-quality problem.”

The extent of water contamination depended on numerous factors, including burn severity, the types of soil and vegetation present, and how close the burned area was to nearby streams and reservoirs. But, the researchers also found that water contamination can extend far past where a fire burned. They looked data from watersheds in Canada, the US, Australia and Portugal.

Most of the toxic chemicals produced during wildfires are transported to nearby waterways during runoff from rain and other precipitation, but the study determined that smoke plumes also transport compounds to other water sources distant from the fire’s perimeter. One of the studies analyzed by researchers said certain toxic chemicals were transported 54 miles from a wildfire, while another study said waterways over 400 miles away could be contaminated by smoke plumes.

“Conventional treatments, such as coagulation and flocculation, sedimentation, rapid sand filtration, and, occasionally, granular activated carbon adsorption, are not designed to handle simultaneous spikes in turbidity, organic matter, trace metals, and other wildfire-derived contaminants, resulting in health risks to the inhabitants.”

“Unlike direct runoff from burned areas, the combined mechanism of atmospheric deposition followed by hydrological transport in unburned watersheds remains poorly quantified,” the researchers said in the analysis. “Despite their long-term persistence and toxicity, post-wildfire concentration variations of trace metals, PAHs, POPs, and WFFCs have not been studied extensively, especially concerning their persistence in sediments and possible remobilization, indicating that further research is required to understand their long-term effects on surface water bodies and aquatic environments.”

Click here to read the full analysis.

This award honours Associate Editors who have demonstrated sustained excellence in their responsiveness, thoroughness, and timeliness.

Dr Huang has served as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Wildland Fire (IJWF) since 2021. He is an Associate Professor at the Dept of Building Environment and Energy Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is the Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Smart Urban Resilience and Firefighting. He received his PhD from Imperial College London.

CSIRO Publishing produces IJWF on behalf of the International Association of Wildland Fire.