Sustainable forest management: The best firebreak after the most extreme summer
07 / 10 / 2025
The summer of 2025 has left a clear lesson across the Iberian Peninsula: without managed forests, there will be no resilience to extreme climate events. Spain recorded its hottest summer on record, with 36 days of heatwaves and peaks above 45 °C. That heat, combined with drought, fueled unprecedented wildfire intensity, making 2025 the worst fire season in three decades.
By the end of August, more than 390,000 hectares had burned. In Galicia alone, August destroyed around 120,000 hectares and 10% of the region’s Natura 2000 Network — damage without precedent. The scientific community now confirms that “fire weather” conditions in Spain and Portugal have become far more likely due to climate change.
Portugal also suffered a black summer, with roughly 270,000 hectares burned so far this year, and endured the largest wildfire in its history: 64,451 hectares consumed in a single event. Together, Spain and Portugal accounted for about two-thirds of all burned area in the EU this year. Faced with this scenario, promoting and supporting Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) is no longer optional — it is a matter of adaptation and security. The events of this summer have shown that investment in prevention must be continuous throughout the year, not focused solely on firefighting during summer months. Through active, preventive silviculture — mainly clearing, pruning, and thinning — we must shape forests that are more resilient, slow the advance of wildfires, and allow effective suppression efforts when fires occur.
In the USSE regions — Portugal, Galicia, Navarre, the Basque Country, and Nouvelle-Aquitaine — forests grow on complex terrain, poor soils, and under temperate climates with summer droughts, fires, pests, and diseases — all risks worsened by climate change. Moreover, ownership is largely private and highly fragmented (smallholdings averaging 0.5–5 ha), making active management difficult and costly. These conditions make it essential to provide stable financial support to those who care for the land. Our forests and their products require active annual silviculture and sustained funding: planting alone is not enough — management is key. These forests supply local wood and cork, reduce emissions by replacing fossil-based materials, store carbon for decades in wood products, and sustain rural employment and ecosystem services.
As the Union of Foresters of Southern Europe (USSE), we believe that turning emergency into resilience requires:
1. A stable framework of incentives for SFM, including annual aid and forest promotion plans, effective payments for ecosystem services (fire prevention, carbon sequestration, water, biodiversity), and fair taxation for smallholders — prioritizing group management and active forest plans.
2. Multiannual funding for prevention (beyond summer campaigns): diversification of species, agroforestry mosaics, pasture restoration, and landscape discontinuity networks; support for prescribed burning and silvopastoral systems as technical tools.
3. Stronger cooperation among landowners (cooperatives, associations, consortia) to overcome fragmentation, reduce costs, and professionalize management through technical advice.
4. Carbon markets for forests and wood products that reward active management and carbon storage in wood, ensuring the forestry sector does not merely offset emissions from others without compensation.
5. Sustainable mobilization of local wood for construction and the bioeconomy (green chemistry, fibers, biomaterials), promoting short supply chains and green public procurement.
6. More science and open data (Copernicus, EFFIS, inventories) and training for landowners and fire crews, integrating early-warning systems and self-protection plans in the wildland–urban interface.
This summer has shown what is truly at stake: lives, villages, soils, water, and rural economies. Sustainable forest management, carried out by organized landowners and backed by smart public policies, is the most effective firebreak against extreme wildfires — and the key to keeping our territories alive under a circular bioeconomy that reduces risks and creates opportunity. Acting now means investing less in suppression tomorrow, and far more in resilience starting today.
Union of Foresters of Southern Europe (USSE)
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