Portugal’s Forest-Fire Season Is Blazing : Environment: The especially dry summer, poor woodland management and perhaps arson are the reasons for the destruction.

Every summer fires ravage the pine and eucalyptus forests of central Portugal and turn vast areas into a blackened wasteland, prompting experts to call for better woodland management.

Sometimes the fires burn for a week, sweeping along a front several miles wide as hundreds of firemen backed by helicopters and light planes battle to bring them under control.

“Whichever way we look we only see flames,” said Lourenco Baptista, president of the League of Portuguese Firemen.

“Often our firemen are called to deal with several fires at once and have to decide which one to tackle first,” he said.

More than 250,000 acres of woodland had burned by midsummer this year--3% of the trees that cover a third of Portugal.

Much of the seared wood can still be used as construction timber once its scorched outer layers have been cut off.

But the annual plague of forest fires still presents a serious threat to Portugal’s timber, cellulose and paper industries, which account for 12% of the country’s exports.

The worst affected area is Europe’s largest pine forest in rugged hills east of the central city of Coimbra.

During this year’s particularly hot and dry summer many municipalities there have lost half their woodland.

Ecologists are worried that trees are being destroyed faster than they are being replaced.

“No more than 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) a year are being replanted,” said Armando Carvalho, a forestry expert with the Portuguese ecology group Quercus.

Fernando Barroso, director of Forestry Production at the Ministry of Agriculture, said fire damage would be cut sharply if the forests were better managed.

But he said it is difficult to persuade the small landowners who control most of Portugal’s 7.7 million acres of forest to clear the undergrowth, maintain access roads and fire breaks and establish water tanks at key points.

Many have abandoned their farms to live in distant towns and seldom visit their rural properties, which have reverted to woodland.

Sentimental attachment prevents them selling their two- to eight-acre plots to commercial forestry concerns who could manage the land better.

“The big problem is that the owners of the forest don’t live in the forest,” Barroso said.

Firemen also criticize the government for failing to look after the 13% of Portugal’s woodland in state hands.

Baptista said fire brigades tackling blazes on state land were hampered by thick undergrowth and poorly maintained access trails.

And ecologists accuse the government of failing to diversify the forests away from the pine and eucalyptus monocultures which have developed with official backing over the last 50 years.

“Trees like oak and chestnut are more fire resistant and more valuable,” said Carvalho of Quercus.

“Although oaks may take 30 years to reach maturity against 10 for eucalyptus, one oak is worth more than three fellings of eucalyptus and will suffer less fire damage.”

The best-managed forests are those in the hands of large commercial companies. But these include the cellulose firms, whose attempts to plant large areas of fast-growing eucalyptus trees have been vigorously opposed by environmentalists.

Most fires are started accidentally by campers and picnickers; shepherds burning old pasture; lightning or even stray fireworks from village festivals.

But many suspect the worst ones are caused by arsonists working for companies that buy seared timber at knockdown prices.

“Do people really have picnics at 3 a.m. or 5 a.m. in the morning?” asked Jose Antonio Almeida de Ferreira, vice president of the League of Firemen.