Portugal Fires Likely To Speed Rural Exodus - Reuters

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VILA NOVA - This year's Portuguese forest fires, among the worst in decades, will likely hasten an exodus from the countryside and leave the land more vulnerable to future blazes, officials and residents said.

Even as fires waned around the rugged terrain of the hamlet of Vila Nova on Thursday, residents in similar crumbling villages feared the flames may continue to feed migration to the cities and land abandonment. Portugal's interior, one of the poorest parts of western Europe, has steadily emptied in the last two decades.

From northern mountains to southern farmlands, the region is increasingly home only to timber grown for the pulp industry, crumbling farmsteads and villages of old people, a combination fire fighters say has helped blazes spread.

"The relation between the abandonment of farming and human exodus from the interior is directly related to the growing size and worsening of the fires. This is undeniable," said Cassiano Costa, head of an 85-village forest association. "Twenty years ago you had 80 percent of people in a village working on the land. Now if you've got three or four, that's a lot."

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