How much protected forest is affected by wildfire?

Three years in figures

The reported forest area burned within protected sites fell sharply between 2023 and 2024, then rose by about 45% in 2025. Even after that increase, the 2025 total remained below 2023.

The annual comparison

Forest burned within protected areas

Italy · 2023–2025 · reported full-year totals in hectares

Reported forest burned within Italy’s protected areas. Calendar years; hectares.

Year	Forest burned (ha)
2023	6,732
2024	3,232
2025	4,696

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These are ISPRA’s reported aggregate estimates. Some category breakdowns in the reports are inconsistent; this comparison uses the aggregate rows throughout. Read the data sources and limitations.

Three observations cannot establish a long-term trend. They do show why choosing a single year can change the story: 2025 looks worse when compared with 2024, and better when compared with 2023. A longer record is needed to understand how the underlying pattern is changing.

38% of what?

The percentage needs a clear denominator. Imagine 100 hectares of Italian forest mapped as burned in 2025. About 38 lay inside protected areas, according to ISPRA’s summary. That does not mean 38% of all protected forest burned. Calculating that would require the total area of protected forest, including the woodland that remained unburned.

The equivalent share was about 31% in 2024. It is a measure of where burned forest was located, rather than the probability that a particular protected site will burn. The 2024 report provides the earlier estimate.

There is another useful distinction. In 2025, ISPRA reported 29,663 hectares of burned land across protected areas, including forests and other land cover. The 4,696 hectares of woodland represented about 16% of that total. The 38% and 16% figures describe the same forest area against two different totals. See table 3.8 of the annual report.

How the forest is measured

Researchers combine three maps: where burning was detected, where forest grows, and where protected-area boundaries lie. The overlapping area gives an estimate of protected forest affected by fire.

ISPRA uses EFFIS burned-area observations and its own forest classification. This covers several kinds of woodland, including deciduous forests, evergreen broadleaf forests and conifers. Some tall Mediterranean scrub is included in the forest classes. The definition matters when comparing these totals with statistics produced by other organisations.

Protected designations can overlap too: the same woodland may belong to a park and a Natura 2000 site. Adding every designation’s figures would risk counting land more than once. That is why the chart uses the agency’s reported all-protected aggregate.

Satellite mapping also has limits. Small features can fall below the imagery’s resolution, and the underlying EFFIS product can include prescribed and environmental burns. EFFIS explains these limitations. These figures describe the mapped fire footprint and should be read with that scope in mind.

What happens after a fire?

A burned hectare tells us the size of the area affected. It does not tell us how many trees died, which species survived or how quickly the forest will recover.

Some ecosystems have evolved with fire and can recover naturally. Others are much more sensitive. Severe or repeatedly occurring fires can make recovery harder, damage habitats and soils, and contribute to lasting changes in vegetation. The OECD’s assessment of wildfire impacts explains why the ecological consequences differ so much between places.

For conservation, the next questions are therefore local: which habitats burned, how severely were they affected, and what is growing back? Tracking recovery gives the area statistic its ecological meaning. Treating every burned hectare as permanently lost forest would hide those differences.

What this means for forest managers

The figures give managers a reason to examine their own sites closely. They do not establish whether protected status itself increases or reduces fire risk. A fair comparison would need to account for climate, vegetation, terrain and management.

The European Environment Agency recommends adapting prevention and restoration to local conditions. That can include managing vegetation and encouraging forest structures that are more resilient to fire, with conservation teams and local communities involved in planning.

Monitoring supports those decisions. Cameras, satellites and sensors can help identify possible fires, but an alert also needs a usable location, verification and a route to responders. The US GAO’s technology review describes both the potential for earlier response and the difficulties of coverage and communication in remote places.

For a protected forest, a practical starting point is to identify sensitive habitats, areas that are difficult to observe and the team responsible for checking alerts. Our guide to fire-camera coverage explains the visibility questions. For a wider geographic view, explore burned land within Europe’s Natura 2000 network.