Petition: Europe Has Burned an Area the Size of Luxembourg. Nobody Is Counting the Animals.

By the end of July 2026, more than 250,000 hectares had burned across the European Union, an area roughly the size of Luxembourg, and the peak of the fire season had not yet arrived. The EU’s Forest Fire Information System counted around 1,200 fires, more than double the long-term annual average of 569. Spain has been worst hit, with over 200,000 hectares gone, about 0.4 percent of the entire country, including the fire that ignited near Burgohondo in Ávila province and became the largest in Spanish recorded history. France set a national record of its own, with more than 116,000 hectares burned across 13,566 separate fires and roughly 260,000 people evacuated from the Gironde. At least 14 people were killed in Almería. June 2026 was the hottest June ever recorded. The human toll is being counted. The animal toll is not, because nobody counts the deer, the tortoises, the nesting birds or the insects, and there is no evacuation order for wildlife. Please sign the petition urging the European Union to build a real strategy for protecting wildlife from fires.

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Here is the detail that should be driving European policy and largely is not. A very large share of what burns in Europe is land that was specifically set aside to protect wildlife. In the 2025 season, 39 percent of the total burned area fell inside Natura 2000 sites, the EU’s network of protected habitats for endangered plant and animal species. In 2022, protected areas lost 365,308 hectares, the highest figure mapped in a decade. These are not incidental losses at the edge of a fire. They are the places European Conservation depends on, and they are burning at a rate the network was never designed to survive. Animals that escape the flames return to habitat with no food, no cover and no water, and populations already small enough to be listed as protected do not simply recover. A strategy that treats wildlife as an afterthought to property and human safety leaves the ecological damage permanent. One Green Planet has covered the heat driving these conditions in how climate change is affecting annual heatwaves, and the current season’s data is available via Euronews. Sign the petition and tell the EU that protected habitat needs a fire plan of its own.

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