# How much of Europe’s burned land is protected nature?

Article and chart prepared on 28 October 2026.

## Source and scope

- European Commission Joint Research Centre, 31 March 2026:
  https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/2025-was-eus-most-destructive-wildfire-season-record-2026-03-31_en
- Advance report on forest fires in Europe, Middle East and North Africa 2025,
  JRC146199, DOI 10.2760/3859043:
  https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC146199
- EU27, calendar year 2025, EFFIS mapped burned area including smaller fires.
- Total: 1,079,538 hectares. Within Natura 2000 sites: 424,023 hectares.
- These are the March 2026 advance-assessment figures, not a live data feed.
- The EFFIS historical-comparison series excludes fires below 30 hectares. Its
  smaller total of 1,034,552 hectares is not the denominator for this article.
- Natura 2000 is one protection network. Areas outside it may have other
  protections; the chart does not label them as unprotected land.
- The proportions describe where burning occurred, not the fraction of the
  Natura 2000 network that burned, the number of sites affected or biodiversity loss.
- EFFIS maps can include prescribed and environmental burns:
  https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu/about-effis/technical-background/rapid-damage-assessment

## Calculations and outputs

Outside Natura 2000 = 1,079,538 - 424,023 = 655,515 hectares.
Each share = hectares / 1,079,538 * 100. Display percentages are rounded to one
decimal place: 39.3% within and 60.7% outside the network. The bar uses unrounded
proportions. The CSV records the exact source hectares and calculated shares.

The chart is an original NuraGaze visualisation, not an official EU graphic.
Rebuild `cover.png` and `cover.svg` with:

```sh
python3 scripts/generate-protected-nature-chart.py
```

Requires Matplotlib. It reads the local CSV and makes no network requests.

## Attribution

Data: European Commission Joint Research Centre / EFFIS, © European Union,
reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

EFFIS data licence:
https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu/about-effis/data-license

Changes: calculated the outside-network remainder and shares, rounded display
labels and drew a new chart. No endorsement by the European Union is implied.