Deadline for land clearing ends

The National Republican Guard (GNR) device, including the Nature and Environment Protection Service (Sepna), is prepared, “from Monday”, to monitor fuel management around buildings and infrastructures, and may apply fines to owners who have not cleaned their land, guarantees an official source from the GNR.

However, the same source explained that the authorities will have “some common sense” when applying the fines, as “there are many difficulties in terms of the job market and machinery”, although he noted that, in addition to the owners, it is also necessary to see the point of view of the “neighbor who complied and has the legitimacy to demand that the land next door be clean”.

However, although the deadline for clearing land is legally April 30, the Government extended it until May 31, due to weather conditions, and then for another 15 days, until June 15, as requested by industry associations.

“Fuel management work on the secondary network of fuel management strips can take place until June 15, 2025”, reads a joint dispatch from the Secretaries of State for Civil Protection, Paulo Simões Ribeiro, and Forests, Rui Ladeira, published in the Official Gazette.

As part of the Safe Forest Campaign 2025, aimed at preventing forest fires, the GNR flagged, between February 16 and April 30, “10,417 plots of land that could be in violation due to lack of fuel 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 signs in the districts of Leiria (2,606), Bragança (1,162), Santarém (941), Coimbra (818) and Viseu (798).

The 10,417 plots of land flagged this year exceeded the 10,256 registered up to 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.

For Ricardo Vaz Alves, director of Sepna at the GNR, the “number of reports is in line with what happened last year” and, compared to the 14,000 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.

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 fine be issued for lack of fuel management”, after “signaling, speaking to the owners, speaking to the neighbours as well”, so that “the message gets across and the situations can be corrected”.

Since the start of the Safe Forest Campaign, until May 18, the GNR registered, according to provisional data, 36 reports of administrative offences for illegal burning and 100 reports for burning piles of wood and bonfires.

Fuel strip management aims to prevent rural fires, but the National Federation of Forest Owners Associations (FNAPF) asked the Government to extend the deadline by “a month and a half”, due to weather conditions.

Given the difficulties in hiring companies for cleaning, particularly due to a shortage of labor and limited equipment, the FNAPF and ANEFA – National Association of Forestry, Agricultural and Environmental Companies considered the deadline for carrying out most of the work to be insufficient and asked for more time before the authorities begin monitoring non-compliance and applying administrative offenses.

Fuel management violations constitute administrative offences punishable by a fine of between 140 and 5,000 euros for individuals and between 1,500 and 60,000 euros for legal entities.