Vila Real, Portugal, March 21, 2025 (Lusa) - The increase in rural fire investigation teams and resources in Portugal, the revision of hazard mapping and the definition of key projects for the Integrated Rural Fire Management System are included in the plan for the forest presented on Friday by the government.
According to a summary of the Intervention Plan for the Forest 2025-2050, presented at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, in Vila Real, the caretaker government's document has enhancement, resilience, ownership and governance as its pillars.
The plan stems from the Cabinet resolution published on 27 September, which mandated the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, José Manuel Fernandes, to present within 90 days, in conjunction with other government areas, a strategy "for intervention aimed at creating and enhancing the forest's value, increasing productivity and the income of forest producers".
In the area of increasing resilience to fires, the plan envisages, in the short term, increasing the number of teams in the working group investigating the crime of rural fires, involving the ministries of Justice and of the Interior and the Secretary of State for Forests, with the latter area of government responsible for increasing the resources available to the working group.
Reducing the fuel load using ‘’grazing and related activities‘’ will be the responsibility of the ministry of agriculture and forestry, but the resilience measures also include monitoring, controlling, containing and eradicating invasive species, monitoring and controlling the phytosanitary state of the forest, maintaining and promoting native or high-value trees, and improving the forestry inspector programme.
Other measures include strengthening the capacity of local authorities, inter-municipal communities and forestry producers' organisations to intervene in fuel management, improving and maintaining the forestry road network, and promoting or revising legislation that allows the state to intervene swiftly in private property for fuel management purposes.
The infrastructure of 42,000 ha (hectares) of the primary network of fuel management strips between 2025 and 2026, and the management and maintenance of 322,000 ha between 2027 and 2050 will be entrusted to the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF), as well as the maintenance of fuel management strips of 55,556 ha/year, within the scope of the Integrated Rural Fire Management System (SGIFR), and the creation of 1,000 new Village Condominiums.
AGIF - the Agency for the Integrated Management of Rural Fires - is responsible for defining the SGIFR's binding key projects and identifying the respective sources of funding, while the Secretary of State for Forestry will analyse the ‘need to revise the fire hazard mapping and its use’ and the law that created the SGIFR.
The Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests is tasked with modernising and simplifying the "administrative process associated with the cork oak and holm oak protection regime, ensuring greater efficiency and keeping it up to date", and with "reviewing the cork oak and holm oak protection legislation in order to significantly increase the multiplication coefficient in compensation".
The institute must ensure the recovery plan for damaged or destroyed infrastructure in burnt areas in 2024, as well as the repair of green infrastructure and areas with high natural value, and also the recovery measures for burnt areas from 2017 to 2024 (100,000 ha/year, between 2026 and 2029).
The operationalisation of the Voluntary Carbon Market, the definition of methodologies for assessing and valuing ecosystem services and the completion of the National Nature Restoration Plan will fall to the Ministry for the Environment and Energy, which will participate in the planting of five million trees a year under the European initiative ‘Three billion trees by 2030’.
The creation of a traceability system for the commercialisation of cork and the structuring of the resin sector as a strategic product of the forest bioeconomy, as well as the enhancement of hunting, aquaculture and fish farming in inland waters also deserve attention.
In the area of governance, it is planned to evaluate the co-management system for common lands and to define a new management plan to be presented to the parish councils in association with the state, to review the management system for national forests and forest perimeters, and to evaluate the support programme for municipal and inter-municipal Forestry Technical Offices.
In addition to funding from the Environmental Fund, the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) and other European sources, the plan provides for FlorestGal, the public forestry management and development company, to be strengthened in order to draw on credit lines, and also to take over the management of state-owned rustic assets in order to promote their enhanced value.
LFS/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
