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This year, the National Guard of the Republic has received 10,251 warnings for not clearing agricultural and forestry land to prevent rural fires, but from Saturday owners who fail to do so will face fines, according to official sources.
Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo Vaz Alves from the GNR Nature and Environmental Protection Agency (Sepna).
The official added that “Coimbra, Leiria and the Viseu-Aveiro zone are the areas with the greatest marking pressure”, which is the assessment carried out in Lusa after a first inspection, but still without applying the administrative violations in the management of the fuel range.
The Ministers of Interior and Agriculture and Fisheries issued a joint order deciding to “extend the deadline for forest owners and producers to clean up their forests and lands for another month,” meaning that “the deadline that ended on March 30, 2019” and “the deadline in April was extended to May 31,” the government notified last month.
“This decision is related to the rainfall in recent months and the high water content in the soil, which has affected many fuel management operations and promoted the rapid growth of vegetation in the areas where interventions have been carried out,” the note explains.
Burning waste “leads to an increased risk of fire”.
“In terms of administrative violations reports, 31 reports of illegal burning and 46 reports of burning have been collected so far,” Sepna officials said, adding that “the regions of Braga and Viseu, for example, are the ones with the highest number of reports.”
In a February order, the Secretary of State for Civil Protection and the Secretary of State for Nature Conservation and Forests identified 991 priority parishes for fuel management checks between May 1 and 31, 2024 (but postponed until June) on owners of rural land in agglomerations close to buildings or bordering forest areas.
The work must be completed by May 31 (instead of April 30), and inspections will also be carried out between June 1 and 30, covering lanes 5 to 10 meters from roads, railways, power transport networks and nature reserves. Gas, the responsibility of each responsible unit.
“We are ready to go to the 991 priority parishes”, assured Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo Vaz Alves, explaining that the inspection plan “will involve a number of means” allocated to inspections carried out in parallel with the fighting, “if necessary”.
The official acknowledged that given that 10,251 signals have been sent so far, the process “will take longer” and that “additional resources beyond those originally planned” will have to be devoted.
“Besides the fact that during the pandemic, obviously there were other priorities and the market had less supply, we noticed that, personally, there was a greater concern (in cleaning). Now, there is still perhaps, none of them is the most appropriate response for companies that offer this type of service”, believes Ricardo Vaz Alves, alluding to the difficulty of recruiting a workforce for this type of work.
Lt. Col. Sepna told Lusa in late April that the lack of cleaning of agricultural and forestry land to prevent rural fires has resulted in administrative violations of “around 2.5 million euros” since 2020.
Fines for failure to clear forests and farmland can be up to €5,000 for natural persons and €25,000 for legal entities, varying according to the respective municipal council.
According to the data sent to Lusa, between 2018 and 2023, the GNR recorded the most land clearance non-compliance (in descending order) in Santarém (4,131 administrative violations), Castelo Branco (2,816), Braga (2,660), Coimbra (2,061) and Aveiro (1,802).
From 2018 to 2023, there were a total of 26,140 administrative violations in the national forest park for failure to clear forest land, and from 2019 to last year, 3,419 burns were registered and 1,359 were burned.
For land located in rural areas, the cleaning area must cover areas within 50 meters of buildings, forests, bushland or natural pasture areas.
In populated areas located in or adjacent to forested areas, fuel management must be carried out outdoors within a distance of no less than 100 meters, this distance also applies to camping sites or industrial parks and landfills.
As well as having to be aware of fines from entities other than the municipality, the council can also notify the property owner to carry out the cleaning, or subsequently carry out the work and reimburse the costs.
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