Last updated on May 12, 2018
Few of us have a clear 50 metre radius all around our property or a 100 metre radius around our village, within which we can control the legal fuel management measures. So to mitigate the effects of future wildfires on our lives and property, we may need to legally insist land that we don’t own and which falls in our fuel management band, is cleaned. So here is a step by step guide on how to get land cleaned in Portugal…
It might seem a rather long-winded process but we believe the more detail or evidence you can supply, the more likely you are to see results.
Update: We submitted our request (based on this format) to get forest cleaned around our house and within a week the GNR (not SEPNA) visited us and inspected the ‘offending’ vegetation and took photos. In the following week forestry crews were busy cutting trees in strategic small patches in the forest – within our 50 m band. What we don’t know is whether it is the owners that are finally complying and hiring the crews or if it being done on orders of the Câmara Municipal.
Frequently the 50 metre or 100 metre village width measured from your house wall may include patches of overgrown scrub land, dense stands of unmanaged or abandoned trees, areas of tree cutting debris which was not removed, a narrow public road across which is more unmanaged forest…indeed, any number of potentially combustible features may surround your house…all owned by other people.
If most of the land is already burnt, such as in Pedrógão Grande, most of the deep ground fuel has gone but you are still entitled to demand that owners comply with the legal spacing of pines and eucalyptus, cutting the dead trees, removing fallen burnt wood and cutting debris, and clearing the new eucalyptus growth on the base and trunks of the trees.
Before you can tackle any non-compliant landowners, you need to sure which fuel band width you are trying to enforce.
Are you within the 100 metre village fuel band?
Villages come in all shapes and sizes and it is the properties on the edge of a village which may be problematic when it comes to this clause of the fuel management law.
Legally if your house is within a set of more than 10 nearby or contiguous buildings, separated by a maximum of 50 metres, you can safely assume you are in the 100 metre zone, the perimeters of which form a closed polygonal line that encompasses all buildings and delimits the least possible area.
If your house/building is isolated by itself, or within 50 metres of a group of less than 10 buildings, all of which are more than 50 metres from the main village buildings, you may have to settle for a 50 metre fuel break.
Note, the measurements are to buildings, not necessarily a house itself. So you could measure from your garden shed (say, 10 metres from your house) to the neighbour’s animal shelter which may still put you in the 100 metre zone.
Measuring distances from your house
To check the distance of your house from others in a village or check where the perimeter of a 50 or 100 metre fuel band might fall, you may find Google Maps or Google Earth in the Satellite view useful. This only works if your house has been in existence for some years – not newly built, because Google Satellite Maps is not up to date, despite the map data year given – it is at least 6 years out of date. If you have a house that does not appear to show on Google Maps, mark the spot where it would be, then do measurements from there. In case, you are not sure how to use the ‘measure distance’ feature on Google Maps…
- Locate your house on the satellite map view.
- Zoom in for a clear view of your roof.
- Click on a chosen point on edge of house, facing direction you want to measure. This creates a marker.
- Right click the marker and select ‘Measure Distance’.
- Click on a point where you want to measure to create another marker.
- Drag second marker to adjust distance which is marked in increments on the line.
- Once you have the correct distance marked, you may want to take a screenshot to add to your land cleaning application. Take more screenshots of distances from other aspects of your house.
While on Google Maps, make a note of the GPS coordinates of your house and those of the uncleaned sites you wish to report, which you can add to your application. Watch this short video on finding GPS coordinates on Google Maps…
Finding a non-compliant owner
Once you have established which fuel band width you need around your house and you see it includes stands of dense forest or other potentially combustible vegetation that you don’t own, you may want to try to locate the owners. Frequently land plots are so small that you’ll probably need to be looking for several owners. So how do you go about finding the owners or at least, the names of owners?
Technically it is not up to you to locate the owners – if the land is not cleaned by the legal cut off date for the year, you are entitled to go ahead with the legal process to get the work done.
If you do know an owner personally, a polite request may or may not solve the problem.
If you want to try to find landowners…
- First look at your own Land Registry Certificate(s) which you should have received from your lawyer when you purchased your property. If you purchased additional pieces of separate land with your house, each should have it’s own Land Registry Certificate. In the section Composição e Confrontações, you should find the registered owner(s) of the land on your boundaries in each compass direction, if they are known by the Land Registry.
- The registered owner however, may not be the current owner. The Land Registry is notoriously out of date when it comes to owners dying and their descendants not bothering to register their land inheritance.
- If you have a public road on a boundary of your property, the LRC will not name the owner of the property on the other side of the road. This opposite property may still fall in your fuel band width.
- Other properties beyond the named boundary properties, but still in your fuel band, will remain unknown as far as your Land Registry Certificate is concerned.
- Accessing the Land Registry online requires a digital certificate number. Currently only lawyers, notaries, Public Citizen Card holders and Citizen Card holders with an integrated digital certificate on their card, can access the services.
- Asking around in your village might get some answers as to who the owners are but bear in mind you just might ruffle a few feathers. It is likely that if the forest owners are not dead, the existing, probably elderly, owners do live locally.
How to proceed to get land cleaned
STEP 1:
You need to complete 2 copies of the request form for the Câmara Municipal and 2 copies for the local GNR.
Why these 2 departments? The Câmara Municipal has the responsibility and budget (Article 153 Decree-Law No. 114/2017 of 29 Dezembro) to get the land belonging to unknown or absentee landowners cleaned. The local GNR is the law enforcement body that issues the ‘ticket’ to non-compliant owners in your area.
The second copies are for you to retain after getting them signed or stamped as proof of your application.
The Request Form is written for a 50 metres fuel break – if you are asking for a 100 metre village cluster fuel break, alter the size in the final paragraph.
Click to open & print (2 pages each):
Here are samples of the forms with an English translation…
Requerimento to Camara_CM-2Requerimento to GNR_CM-2
Request form English 2
In part of the form, you need to enter the Land Registry district and numbers of your property, which are on your LR certificate in the following places…
Top Left: Conservatória do Registo Predial de Pedrógão Grande
Top Right: First 4 numbers 1234/xxxxxxxx
Halfway Down (approx): Matriz N° : 5678
So you enter your own details as follows, where the examples are in red:
do prédio descrito na Conservatória do Registo Predial
de __Pedrógão Grande__, sob o nº ___1234___ inscrito na matriz com o nº
_____5678____ registado no livro nº___________N/A________________ a
folhas ________N/A_____________ sito em (localidade)__Street Address & House No__,
Freguesia de ___Parish eg: Graça_______
If you have additional Land Registry certificates for other pieces of land you own, fill the form out as for your main house LR certificate and enclose copies of the other LR certificate(s).
STEP 2
Take as many photographs as necessary to illustrate the proximity of the uncleaned land to your house/outbuilding/other structure. Print x 2 batches of these photos. Write under each photo – the date it was taken, the compass direction of the view and any other points you think will be useful such as vegetation cover and enclose with your application.
Print and enclose copies of your Google Maps screenshots with any useful information you would like to point out on each copy. It is worth emphasising on these copies and in your cover letter, that the satellite views are out of date and the vegetation cover is far greater today.
STEP 3
Make 2 copies of your Land Registry Certificate(s) and enclose.
STEP 4
Write a cover letter in Portuguese with further details you may wish to include such as…
- GPS coordinates of your property and those of the offending sites.
- Fuel band width you are seeking – 50 metres or 100 metres. If 100 metres, give the distance to your nearest neighbour in the village.
- Description of offending land cover, ie. pine and eucalyptus forest, overgrown grass/scrub, wood cutting debris etc. Give a proviso that Google Maps Satellite views are years out of date and the actual land vegetation is different to that shown.
- Distances of offending land to your house / outhouses. Remember, it is any building, not just your house.
- You might like to emphasise that you fear for the future safety of your home.
Here is a sample cover letter in English with suggestions in red. Once done, paste in Google Translate, copy and print x 2. Google Translate is not perfect but adequate for this purpose.
STEP 5
Hand in 1 set of documents to your Câmara Municipal and 1 set of documents to your local GNR. Make sure you get your copies of the form signed or stamped as proof of receipt. It is preferable to hand them over in person rather than send an email because you can be sure it is done – emails are unreliable because you don’t know whether the correct person has read them and they may get ‘lost’ somewhere.
You do have the option to remain anonymous when filing your complaint – just inform the Câmara Municipal and GNR at this time.
What is supposed to happen next?
The Câmara Municipal and GNR have now to verify the reported land is in breach of the fuel management law. This they may do by visiting you and viewing the site.
In 2018, the Câmara Municipal has until 31 May 2018 to ensure all the necessary fuel management measures have been completed.
Once Câmara Municipal agrees the land needs fuel management, they have a maximum of 5 days to notify the owners or responsible entities and set them a deadline.
Where the owners still remain unknown and there is no response to the Câmara Municipal and GNR notification, the deadline will pass without the work being done. It is then the responsibility of the Câmara Municipal to get the work done.
As of 15 March 2018, the imposition of fines for non-compliant owners has been suspended until 1 June 2018. This does not mean that the negligent owners necessarily have an extension of the fuel management deadline, it just means the fines will not be imposed until then. The Câmara Municipal must still ensure the work is done by 31 May and if it is not, get it done. During this period the GNR will be serving notifications and collating details of the persistent non-compliant landowners and they should be penalised after 1 June 2018.
At this stage, we have done all we can within the bounds of the latest fuel management laws – so we must wait and see what happens by 31 May 2018.
About tree cutting debris…
If you are successful in getting forest land cleaned, keep an eye on whether the debris is taken away or left on site. We have spoken to quite a few people who, as we have too, been left with piles of branches and pine needles in their 50 m fuel zone. You must insist this is removed as it will be just as much a fire risk as the trees themselves, in future fires. Read more
And if nothing happens, then what?
The Câmara Municipal deadline of 31 May 2018 for completion of all fuel management work and the start of this year’s Critical Fire Period which has been amended to start on 30 June 2018 (it was 21 June before all the rain in March) does not leave much time to get outstanding work done.
So if the Câmara Municipal fails to get the land cleaned around your house, you are legally entitled to get it done yourself…
- Fix a notice(s) on the offending land advising of your intent to pursue the fuel management law (Article 15. Paragraphs 6, 7, 8 of Decree-Law No.158/2017 of 17 Agosto) for no less than 5 days.
- The lack of response to this warning is seen before the law as an acceptance of its assumptions.
- After 5 days with no response, the owners are obliged to allow access to the land so you can send in a team of forest workers to clean the land.
- You are legally allowed to off-set the costs of the work by selling the wood. Any excess of this amount should be paid to the owner (should you ever be able to locate the owner).
- Sample advisory notice (Red text indicates what to fill in). Source: Inovgeo
- Sample advisory notice translated into English
This last ditch legal effort to get forested land cleaned may present some difficulties – finding an available forestry crew as they will be busy and they are now often charging inflated prices. These costs will need to balanced against the decreased value of salvaged burnt timber. If the trees you are trying to get cleared are unburnt, the glut of cut timber from fuel management measures, may mean you won’t necessarily get a good price.
Please contact us if you need any help or have questions or suggestions about getting land cleaned.
Header Photo: Steve Robinson
