Speaking to Lusa, the Commander of the Terras de Trás-os-Montes Sub-region represented the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority, the national agency responsible for managing emergencies such as fires. This is one of the Portuguese partners in the European USE4FOREST project, an initiative focused on forest management and fire response. He explained, “This new app [‘app’] will go live during the critical fire season from July to September. We aim to assess its potential in organising and fighting fires, as well as deploying firefighting resources—both human (firefighters and support staff) and mechanised (vehicles and equipment)—to the most critical areas.”

According to João Noel Afonso, who was speaking at the conclusion of a two-day meeting among partners held in Miranda do Douro, in the district of Bragança, another objective of this app is to analyse the areas with the highest fuel load (vegetation or organic material that can burn during a wildfire) in depopulated border regions, thereby enabling better coordination among the agents involved in each operation, whether firefighting or land management.

Optimistic project

The commander is optimistic about the project’s potential and hopes it will help identify ways to prevent fires.

“The nature of wildfires has been changing in recent years as a result of climate change; they are becoming increasingly violent and catastrophic, and we intend to innovate in forest management to prevent even larger ones,” she emphasised.

Lead of the project

Ina Bárrio Blanco, from the Galician Regional Government—the lead entity of the project—noted that another immediate objective is to coordinate faster action to extinguish forest fires and work together on fire prevention, using a new strategy based on clearing and monitoring the land.

“The fires in Spain, France, and Portugal in 2025 were faster and more explosive, as if there were no borders. Portuguese fires spread to Galicia and Castile and León, and those from Castile and León spread to Portugal. Therefore, we are seeking cooperation among the different entities in each country,” she noted.

According to the Executive Secretary of the Intermunicipal Community (CIM) of Terras de Trás-os-Montes, this project also includes the implementation of a series of “pilot projects” to be developed by Portugal, Spain, and France, aimed at making forests more resilient to fire.

Funded by €2.2 million in European funds, with a total investment of nearly three million, the USE4FOREST project involves 14 entities from three countries in Southwest Europe (SUDOE).

Innovative strategies

Aimed at developing innovative strategies for forest fire prevention and enhancing forest areas in the region, the project began on 1 January 2024 and is scheduled to conclude on 31 December of this year, with the findings to be presented in the first quarter of 2027.

On the cross-border cooperation program’s webpage dedicated to this project, it states that over the past decade (2012–2022), the SUDOE countries have experienced a high number of fires, with an annual average of 222 in Spain, 213 in Portugal, and 105 in France, placing them among the five countries with the highest number of fires in the EU.

“The fact that three of the worst fire seasons in the EU have occurred in the last six years demonstrates the upward trend, as pointed out by experts and due, in part, to the effects of climate change—a situation exacerbated in the SUDOE region by the progressive abandonment of rural areas and the consequent decline of productive activities traditionally linked to forestry,” it adds.