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As part of the Safe Forest Campaign 2025, aimed at preventing forest fires, the National Republican Guard flagged, between February 16 and April 30, “10,417 plots of land that may be in violation due to lack of management”, indicated the security force's communications division.
Fuel management aims to reduce plant and woody material in order to hinder the spread and intensity of fires around homes and population clusters in rural areas, with the majority of notifications in the districts of Leiria (2,606), Bragança (1,162), Santarém (941), Coimbra (818) and Viseu (798).
The districts with the least number of plots of land are Évora (51), Portalegre (57), Guarda (209), Beja and Porto (232), completing the table with Lisbon (259), Faro (260), Vila Real (280), Setúbal (360), Viana do Castelo (379), Aveiro (464), Braga (652) and Castelo Branco (657).
The GNR highlighted, however, “that the deadline for carrying out fuel management work is still in progress, which has been extended until May 31”, predicting that “the inspection period will begin after that date”.
For now, even if still provisional, the 10,417 plots of land flagged this year exceed the 10,256 registered until May 31 last year, but are below the 14,319 in 2023, 10,989 in 2022, 14,545 in 2021, 24,227 in 2020 and 31,582 in 2019, according to data previously released by the GNR.
For Ricardo Vaz Alves, director of the Nature and Environment Protection Service (Sepna) of the GNR, the “number of reports is in line with what happened last year” and, given the 14 thousand reports from previous years, he believes that there is “an evolution in terms of society’s awareness of fuel management”.
“There is a lot of awareness-raising work being done here and this is bearing fruit in terms of fuel management,” said the officer, speaking to Lusa.
“We clearly noticed that there was a greater effort on the part of citizens to regularize all potentially infringing situations and, on top of that, taking into account not only the rainfall that occurred, but also the lack of companies in the market available to perform this type of service,” he added.
The director of Sepna assured that the objective of the GNR “is always to raise awareness and seek to correct potentially infringing situations” and, only as a last resort, will “a violation report be issued for lack of fuel management”, after “signaling, speaking to the owners, speaking to the neighbors as well”, so that “the message gets across and the situations can be corrected”.
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While clearing land is seen as a doing good, it is a double edged sword and can often do more harm than good. When land is cleared, 1. you lose insect habitat. 2. The possibility of organic farming is more difficult as you need to leave a mulch on the surface to keep the nutrients in the soil. 3. Cutting the vegetation short, leads to dryer soil which means more irrigation is necessary. 4. Over use of weed killer is often used to help with the clearing. 5. Wild flowers are often not given enough time to produce seed. 6. Soil erosion. Lots of the natural habitats are being destroyed by over clearing, birds, bees and all insects are diminishing. Risk assessments on a case by case basis would be better than blanket rules.
By Sef from Lisbon on 27 May 2025, 11:51
Forest fires are a real threat, and land should be cleaned / cleared in occupied areas. However, in my area the township refuses to clear many areas that are their responsibility. Next to my condo building is a property that belongs to the township, but they have said they will clear it only if we pay 150 euros, because "it's next to undeveloped land and they only clear it if it's all developed". Pardon me? We already have paid, through our taxes.
By Paulo from Algarve on 28 May 2025, 11:55