The Director General for Biodiversity of the Ministry of the Environment, José Luis Herranz, and the Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries of the Government of Cantabria, Jesús Oria, today visited the facilities of the Forest Fire Reinforcement Brigade (BRIF) of Ruente, in Cantabria.

The Ministry of the Environment will allocate 68.2 million euros this year for the prevention and fight against forest fires. The investment planned for 2006 represents an increase of 8 per cent over 2005. The Ministry has significantly increased and strengthened the State’s resources for the prevention and extinction of fires in the last two years. The new means include the creation of the winter BRIFs (Forest Fire Reinforcement Brigades) (2 in 2004-2005, 5 in 2005-2006) and the expansion of the EPRIF (Forest Fire Prevention Teams), which work for 6 months in rural areas with farmers and ranchers to reduce their risky practices. causing a high percentage of fires.

It is also working to improve the working conditions of the workers of the BRIFs dependent on the Ministry, who will already have a longer contract this summer (from 3 months to 4 months) and a longer training period (from one week to two weeks).

Regarding the actions it has undertaken for the restoration of burned forests, this year it will allocate 17.5 million for these tasks and the removal of forest biomass. In this regard, it should be noted that the Ministry has created a specific line of support for the autonomous communities to increase the removal of residual forest biomass, and to recover it for energy purposes, in accordance with the National Renewable Energy Plan.