RESIST Region Success Story: Extremadura

Although the total number of fires and the overall burned area have decreased in recent years, Extremadura is increasingly affected by large (>500 ha) and very large (>5,000 ha) wildfires, causing significant social and environmental losses. The growing occurrence of megafires is linked to the combined effects of rural depopulation, land abandonment, fuel accumulation and rising temperatures.

The Extremadura experience demonstrates that wildfire prevention can move beyond reactive fuel management towards integrated landscape governance. The combination of productive fuel breaks, participatory planning and preventive public forest management provides a structured model that can be adapted to other fire-prone regions facing rural depopulation and fragmented land ownership. Through RESIST, this integrated experience, the AIGP framework and MOSAICO approach, is being shared with other European regions, contributing to cross-regional knowledge exchange on participatory landscape governance and community-based wildfire prevention strategies.