Authorities investigating suspected arson in a wildfire in southern Italy this week discovered a horrifying clue: a cat with “a rag soaked in combustible material wrapped around its tail.”
“These animals were released into the field and ran around spreading the fire,” Domenico Costarella from Calabria’s civil protection agency said in a video posted on Facebook on Tuesday. He added that other evidence also pointed to arson, including lighting candles between flammable rags and delayed igniters.
Firefighters are still working to extinguish fires around Calabria’s Pollino National Park, Italian broadcaster RAI reported on Wednesday, saying they had completed more than 160 missions in the region in the past 24 hours.
According to CNN’s Italian affiliate SkyTG24, the Italian Society for the Protection of Animals and the Environment has filed a criminal complaint and announced a €1,000 reward for information on the person who may have set the cat on fire.
According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), Europe is experiencing a severe fire season this year. A wet winter brought in new vegetation, much of which became a breeding ground for fires after three consecutive summer heatwaves. EFFIS said in its daily report that 2026 was a relatively good year for fires across Europe, but the continent’s fire season remained above the 20-year average.
Using cats to spread fires is not a new phenomenon in southern Italy. In 2016, Sicilian authorities accused rioters of using cats to start forest fires in a national park. The following year, officials said the same technique had been used to set fires near Mount Vesuvius outside Naples.
Lauren Pearson, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, told CNN last year that there is evidence that mafia groups frequently set fires to seize control of territory, often purchasing land at high prices in the aftermath.
Pearson said some organized crime groups have taken advantage of Italy’s transition to clean energy in recent years. One farmer who testified before the Anti-Mafia Commission in 2022 said that after his land was burned, he was approached by a solar panel company to sell it.
Sergio Nazzaro, a journalist and former spokesman for the head of the anti-mafia parliamentary committee, said mafia groups were exploiting the emergency situation through front organizations of “labor to ignite concessions to build on burnt land.”
In Calabria, Costallera of the Civil Protection Department warned that social changes are needed to stop arson.
“We’re getting back to work and getting back to our places, but we need to think differently,” he said. “These are inhumane acts. Sadly, men are our biggest enemies.”
