Fire and resilience on the Iberian Peninsula

Posted on June, 24 2025


A large forest fire blazes in Greece in 2024.

More frequent and intense droughts, storms and heat waves, melting glaciers, warming oceans and rising sea levels – climate change is already causing immense harm to the natural world, putting countless species, including our own, at risk. 

WWF’s ‘How climate changes wildlife’ series focuses on the need to safeguard wildlife around the world from these harmful impacts. Our third feature takes us to the Iberian Peninsula, where unique forest landscapes and the wildlife they support are threatened by increasingly ferocious wildfires.


Wildfires are a powerful symbol of the climate crisis – as well as a symptom and a cause.

From the Arctic to the Amazon to Australia, as climate conditions have become hotter and dryer we’ve been seeing increasingly severe wildfires that burn fiercer, longer and over larger areas. In turn, wildfires release vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere – equivalent to the EU’s total emissions each year. 

As well as the human and financial cost, fires can have a devastating impact on natural ecosystems and wildlife – from Australia, where the 2019-20 bushfires burnt more than 12 million hectares of forestland and killed or displaced an estimated 3 billion animals, to Canada where many places in 2025 are experiencing their worst ever wildfire season. 

In Europe too, there have also been catastrophic effects on forests and the animals living there, with the worst fires happening in the Mediterranean and the forests of the Iberian Peninsula especially vulnerable.

Iberian forests at risk

From the Atlantic coast and the mountains of the Pyrenees to dry, drought-prone Mediterranean regions, the varied geography of the Iberian Peninsula supports a wide variety of forests and woodlands. These include unique ecosystems like cork oak forests, which are rich in biodiversity. 


The Iberian lynx is no longer classified as "endangered" on the IUCN Red List.

A huge variety of wildlife depends on these forests, including the Iberian lynx – a wild cat that was almost extinct at the turn of the century but has made a stunning comeback thanks to the efforts of WWF and others.

Other threatened species that call these forests home include the Cantabrian brown bear, Gredos ibex, Iberian wolf and Bonelli’s eagle.   

Forest fires are a danger to these and many more species. Hotter, dryer conditions also mean fires are starting much earlier in the year, posing a particular threat to nesting birds and wild animals rearing their young.

Although wildfires can occur naturally, the vast majority – on the Iberian Peninsula and worldwide – are started by people, either accidentally or deliberately. Thanks to growing public awareness and fire prevention efforts, the total number of fires each year has decreased by almost half in Portugal and more than a third in Spain over the last decade.  

However, extreme weather conditions have led to an increase in the number of large fires covering 500 hectares or more and catastrophic megafires covering thousands of hectares. These are the fires that have the most severe impacts on people and nature – like the wildfires in Portugal in September 2024, which burnt more than 135,000 hectares of land and killed at least nine people. 

Along with the impact of climate change, megafires are worsened by land-use practices. Large plantations of single species – including non-native trees like eucalyptus and radiata pine – are especially flammable. Similarly, a build-up of shrubs and underbrush in degraded and abandoned areas provides continuous fuel for fires.

Prevention is better than cure

Both Spain and Portugal have invested heavily in fire-fighting measures, but this is only part of the solution. The most important priority is to make forest landscapes more resilient and less vulnerable to fire – which can also be an opportunity to boost biodiversity, improve rural livelihoods and revive cultural heritage.


A 3km firebreak has been restored in Valencia to help stop the spread of wildfires.

WWF is working on this challenge across the Iberian Peninsula, including in Cortes de Pallás in Valencia province, Spain, where nearly 30,000 hectares of forest was burnt in a fire in 2012. Working with local foresters and fire ecology experts, we’ve restored a 3km-long, 75-hectare strip of land designed to stop the spread of wildfire. 

This agroforestry mosaic includes new areas of cattle pasture and terraces for growing aromatic plants, both of which act as fire breaks. Foresters have thinned out pine trees, whose litter is particularly flammable, while encouraging the growth of species like holm oaks, which are more resistant to fire. A herd of 40 goats is also helping to keep down the vegetation under the forest canopy. 

All this makes for a more diverse landscape, with less fuel, more open spaces and more variation in tree height to prevent flames sweeping across the forest canopy. As well as stopping fires from spreading, importantly it provides more varied habitats for wildlife. And incorporating grazing and crops, and potentially orchards or olive groves, can provide new sources of income for rural communities.  

We’re also experimenting with similar projects in Portugal, restoring landscapes that were severely affected by wildfires in recent decades. In the Algarve, the Plantar Água (planting water) project is restoring 200 hectares of previously burnt areas and is also working  on the entire water cycle − replenishing water in the uphills, recharging aquifers on the hillsides and reducing consumption in coastal farming areas. 

Another restoration project is taking place in Boticas − a region heavily affected by forest fires in recent years, in particular by the great fire of 2016 that affected almost 60 per cent of the area. This project is helping to restore and transform the forest landscape in an area of approximately 60 hectares − increasing its resilience to wildfires, promoting the recovery of biodiversity and providing grazing pasture for community use. 

We are also active in other European countries, as well as across continents, to help tackle the growing wildfire threat to people and nature.

Greece, for example, in 2023 experienced the largest fire recorded in the history of the country and European Union up until now. The fire burnt for 16 days across 94,250 hectares, devastating 58 per cent of the Dadia National Park including crucial nesting habitat for cinereous vultures, one of the world’s largest flying birds.

WWF has since worked with the Ministry of Environment to evaluate what lessons can be learnt and produce a roadmap for restoring the affected ecosystems − a welcome reminder of the huge potential to restore landscapes in a way that makes them more resilient to fires, while bringing benefits for people and nature.

How climate changes wildlife

Beginning in Africa and journeying northwards to the Arctic, this four-part series examines how climate change is affecting wildlife. 

Part 1: Deepening drought and the threat to iconic African elephants
Part 2: Coping with change in a warming Mediterranean 
Part 3: Fire and resilience on the Iberian Peninsula
Part 4: Coming in August

WWF is partnering with a pioneering public art project called THE HERDS to inspire action for climate and nature. Until August 2025, herds of life-sized puppet animals are stampeding through city centres on a 20,000km route from Africa’s Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle − an artistic representation of wildlife escaping life-threatening climate impacts that aims to inspire urgent action by people everywhere.