Necva Tastan Sevinc
06 August 2026•Update: 06 August 2026
Wildfires have burned around 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) in Italy so far this year, an increase of 133% compared with the average of the past two decades, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said Wednesday.
The burned area is equivalent to approximately 100,000 football pitches, while nearly one-third of the fires affected protected areas, according to a new report by WWF Italy.
Across Europe, some 435,000 hectares have already burned so far this year, around 100,000 hectares more than during the same period in 2025.
In Spain, wildfires have consumed 219,000 hectares, while another 91,000 hectares have burned in France. The fires have caused dozens of casualties and forced more than 300,000 people to temporarily evacuate their homes.
WWF said increasingly extreme wildfires were becoming the “new normal,” driven by climate change and inadequate management of forests and other vulnerable landscapes.
While emergency firefighting operations remain essential, they are no longer sufficient as fires become more intense, simultaneous, and difficult to contain, the organization warned.
“Every summer we witness the same scenario: devastated territories, evacuated communities, destroyed biodiversity, and enormous economic costs,” said Edoardo Nevola, forestry manager at WWF Italy.
“We can no longer simply chase fires and prioritize suppression; the real challenge is to prevent fires from becoming uncontrollable by intervening before they develop,” he added.
The report outlined 10 priorities for authorities, including increasing prevention funding, strengthening coordination between agencies, improving risk monitoring, tightening territorial surveillance, and incorporating wildfire prevention into climate-adaptation policies.
WWF said human activity was responsible both for the climate change intensifying extreme fires and for almost all individual wildfire outbreaks, stressing that structural investment was necessary to make landscapes more resilient.
