Save our Forest, save our lives …

By Catarina Delgado, Leonor Batista, Maria Gomes,

Pedro Paulino, Rúben Mestre

Forests are an essential part of our planet. They maintain the balance of several eco
systems. Every year, however, frightening forest fires in California or in Australia
become news. And Portugal is not an exception. Forest fires are a constant reality in our
country too. Every year, in the peak of summer, thousands of acres of forest are
swallowed up by the fire. In June 2017, Portugal suffered one of the most devastating
fires ever in its history, known as Pedrógão Grande Wild Fires, where 66 people lost their
lives. Are fires inevitable and uncontrolled phenomena?

Fires are an increasingly frequent phenomenon and

cause significant changes to the landscape with
environmental, social and economic consequences.
Severe climate changes, resulting in increasingly
hot summers, lack of land-use planning namely
regarding non-indigenous eucalyptus ~ a very
inflammable tree species and really common in
Portugal – as well as lack of cleaning and
surveillance of the forest have resulted in environmental and human tragedies.

Another possible reason to justify these events is the population’s lack of knowledge about the
laws, how to act to prevent and often the lack of care / civilization to keep the forest clean.
Keeping this in mind, we wondered if we and many other teenagers, as the next generation, are
aware of these facts and prepared to avoid the worst. We, then, decided to make a research
regarding the forest, surrounding the village of Caneças and our school by visiting the places,
interviewing local authorities and searching for the teens’ opinions.
Visiting the spaces

The picture was not very encouraging.

Many bush areas presented lots of abandoned trash, and
the bush was a bit dense, which is the ideal fuel to start a
fire.
Moreover we could not see either any cleaning work
going on or any surveillance.

Our local authorities’ point of view

Citizens’ choices
According to the president of the parish council of Caneças, Manuel Varela, either the present
and the future depend on the citizens’ choices “what I think it is important is to call on the
people’s common sense” focusing on the young generations’ role: “it’s up to you, the younger
generation has to carry on this task of educating your pairs so that, in the next years, we have a
generation that cares more about the public spaces, respecting them.”
He also emphasized that the adolescents must keep the public spaces clean, saying “…and
expecting to make the public spaces our home and not making it our rubbish bin where we
throw our wastes, where we let the bushes grow around our houses without any control,
thinking we only have rights and not duties”.
Fields and forest cleaning
One of the great causes of these fires is related to the lack of field and forest cleaning.
The commander of Caneças Fire Brigade claimed that “the cleaning of the forest is not done as
much as it should, although there is legislation that compels people to do it”, adding, “…the
problem is that this has costs and many owners cannot afford it financially.”
On the other hand, the president Manuel Varela provided a different explanation, ”most of these
situations related to forest fires or cleaning habits have to do with civic spirit”.
The legislation mentioned by the commander is the Decree-law 14/2019 pages 443-446. This
law compels the owner to clean up the land until March 15 th; its mandatory to create a
protection strip of 50 meters around all houses, warehouses, workshops, factories or yards
according to the following rules:
Cut the branches of the trees up to 4 meters above the ground and keep them at least 4 meters
away from each other (10 meters in the case of pines and eucalyptus);
cut trees and shrubs within 5 meters of the building (excluding fruit trees and protected trees)
and prevent branches from projecting over the roof;
Do not accumulate firewood near the house;
This legislation also states that it is mandatory to clean and cut trees 100 meters around
villages, campsites, industrial parks, logistics platforms and landfills.
According to the law if you don’t do it by March 15, you may have to pay fines that can reach
10,000 euros for individuals and up to 120,000 euros for companies
Manuel Varela assured that ”green spaces under the responsibility of the parish council are
cleaned, and regular maintenance is done” (…), this is our duty and … we do everything
according to the law. ”

A survey – Teens’ behaviour and awareness

The question is… Do youngsters care about the forest? Are they aware of the importance of
one’s preventing safety behaviour ? Do they know the legislation?
We asked 114 random secondary school students at Caneças High School about their
behaviour towards the forest, about fields cleaning, their knowledge about legislation and their
knowledge about debris burning and the fire fighters and the local authorities’ role.
The majority of the inquired (94 students)
assumed a correct behaviour regarding
keeping respecting the forest not
abandoning, throwing trash away.
Yet the percentage decreased when
asked about the habit of cleaning the
green area around their houses; 78
students assumed that they and their
families had never done it.
In our survey, we also acknowledged
that, among 114 inquires, just around a
half (60 answers) knew the legislation about the Forest and Green Spaces general rules and
there was lack of information on when and how to do debris burnings.
Actually , regarding debris burnings , we got a variety of answers. 82 students chose Winter, 7
Summer, 10 Spring, 8 Autumn and 7 claimed that burnings should never be made.
Carla Silva, forest specialist and City Hall technician, mentioned that actually it’s forbidden to
make these fires at the peak height that can change each year and there is legislation and a
government platform where these activities must be registered. Whilst last year the gap where
debris burning could not be done was from late May to mid-October, this year it has changed to
a shorter gap or can stretch up to November. Either way, “some tragedies have occurred
because the people are caught either by the uncontrolled burning or by the smoke. One must
never do it alone!”, she added.
According to the Fire Brigade Commander, if you aren’t sure of what you are doing you
shouldn’t do it. However if you take that decision, your local firefighters should have that
information, but usually people don’t inform them because they don’t know they should or they
just think they have it all under control.
Once again, comparing the results of the survey and these words, 95 people said that they
knew about this information and only 19 didn’t know. This leads to the second possibility that
was given by the the population really does think everything is always under control.
Maybe that is the problem. Perhaps too much confidence is taking us and the forest to
misfortunes. The fact is that, we as human beings and citizens have to change our behaviour,
look after our lives, homes and, more important, keep a clean and green world to the next
generations.
Carla Silva advised the future generations to be aware and alert. She also focused on other
rather important issues “the exodus from the rural spaces into the cities made the former often
become difficult to manage, and these areas of wild weeds are very important to the fauna.
However, when not taken care they may trigger the spread of wild fires”.
It’s true that sometimes there are fires that are inevitable, at the end they can just be a natural
phenomenon, but one thing must stay in everybody’s minds: we can avoid some situations
caused by uncontrolled fires. It depends on the work and on everyone’s responsible behaviour,
whether it is the civil society or the parish councils or the national government.

In our prime minister’s words “cleaning up is an effort that involves the whole society”. It
is essential that everyone becomes more aware, more informed and able to play their
role. Summers will be less tragic and perhaps we will be able to preserve or rebuild a
country with clean, green forests.