A village association in Peneda-Gerês National Park, northern Portugal, is asking for native trees, volunteers and tools to bring forest back to the slopes of the Serra Amarela, burnt in July 2025. The goal is a protective ring of woodland around the villages of Lourido and Froufe. In November the community gathers again: on the 8th to launch the next phase, and on the 10th to open a tree nursery with the local schoolchildren.

At a glance

• Where: Entre Ambos-os-Rios, Ermida and Germil parish, Ponte da Barca, inside Peneda-Gerês National Park
• What’s needed: native trees, volunteers, tools
• Key dates: 8 November 2026 (project launch, with a chestnut feast) · 10 November 2026 (school tree nursery opens)
• Who: Associação Cultural Recreativa e Desportiva de Entre Ambos-os-Rios, with the non-profit Reflorestar Portugal
• Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / +351 914 491 676 / https://www.facebook.com/acrdentreambososrios/
• Last checked: 27 October 2026

Twelve days of fire on the Serra Amarela

The Serra Amarela rises to 1,361 metres and is one of the four mountain ranges of Peneda-Gerês, Portugal’s only national park. On its Ponte da Barca side, the villages of Lourido, Froufe, Sobredo and Ermida have lived for centuries from terraced fields, common grazing land (baldios) and the cattle that climb the mountain each summer.

In July 2025, a wildfire that took 12 days to put out swept through these villages. According to ICNF, Portugal’s Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests, the fire burnt 7,550 hectares, 5,786 of them inside the national park. That is roughly three-quarters of the area of the city of Lisbon.

Plant, lose, plant again

The community responded quickly. In November 2025, the local association swapped its annual mountain race, the Trilhos Ocultos (“Hidden Trails”), for a day of hoes and spades: more than a hundred volunteers planted over a thousand trees around Lourido and Sobredo, many of them donated by ICNF.

Then the fire came back. The association says that planting was lost in a blaze in July 2026. Today it has between 300 and 400 young trees grown from seeds collected on the mountain itself. It is a small number for a whole hillside, but the right place to start: trees born there, adapted to that soil and that climate.

Why native trees matter

Any tree will not do. A forest of native species does three things a fast plantation cannot:

• It holds the soil. After a fire, the first heavy rains wash the topsoil off the slopes. Deep roots slow that erosion.
• It slows the fire. Oaks and other native broadleaf trees tend to burn less intensely than eucalyptus and maritime pine, especially in continuous, moist stands.
• It gives wildlife a home. Elsewhere in the park, WWF Portugal’s D-Evolução programme has already planted more than 1,700 native trees and shrubs across 46 burnt hectares — English oak (Quercus robur), Iberian birch (Betula celtiberica), holly (Ilex aquifolium) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) — to restore shelter for roe deer and steady the habitat of the Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus).

The plan in Entre Ambos-os-Rios is practical: a ring of native forest around Lourido and Froufe, acting as a buffer between the mountain and the houses.

A community putting down roots

The association is not alone. It is working with Reflorestar Portugal, a non-profit founded after Portugal’s devastating 2017 fires that focuses on ecological regeneration, agroforestry and training for rural communities.

Together they held a citizens’ assembly in the parish. Residents shared their fears, memories and ideas for making the villages better prepared for wildfire. Those conversations shaped a project that Reflorestar Portugal is now developing for the parish. If it secures funding, it will offer local people training in wildfire prevention and in how to respond once a fire has passed.

When we contacted the association for this article, its first words were of thanks: “We are immensely grateful for all the support, all the goodwill and all the help” (translated from Portuguese). The partnership with Reflorestar Portugal, they told us, is the project they are most excited about for the parish.

Two dates mark the next step:

• 8 November 2026 — Reflorestar Portugal presents the project to residents, with a magusto (traditional chestnut feast) and Minho folk music from the Zuca-Truca.
• 10 November 2026 — a teaching nursery opens behind the sports hall of the Entre Ambos-os-Rios primary school. With help from a specialist, the children will sow, water and follow each plant from seed.

Tanya Pires, from the association’s board, sums up the spirit: “More than planting trees, we want to put down roots” (translated from Portuguese). A school nursery is exactly that: the next forest on the Serra Amarela will be planted by the people who grew up caring for it.

How you can help

1. Donate native trees — oaks, birches, holly, sweet chestnut and other native species, ideally of local origin. Check first with the association which species and quantities are useful. Eucalyptus, acacia and other non-native species will not help.
2. Volunteer for planting and aftercare days. A young tree needs looking after through its first summers.
3. Lend or donate tools — hoes, spades, watering cans, tree guards.
4. Join the 8 November gathering and meet the people rebuilding the mountain.
5. Support wider restoration in the park, such as WWF Portugal’s D-Evolução programme.
6. Help the training project happen — contact Reflorestar Portugal or the association to find out how you or your organisation can support its funding.

Association contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / +351 914 491 676 / https://www.facebook.com/acrdentreambososrios/

Visit the Serra Amarela with respect

• Don’t plant on your own. Inside the national park, planting should happen through organised, authorised actions using suitable species and seed sources [CHECK WITH ICNF]. Join a local initiative instead.
• Stay on marked trails. On a burnt slope, every step off the path loosens soil the rain will carry away and crushes shoots that are already regrowing on their own.
• Leave everything as you find it. Pine cones, seeds, stones and charred wood are all part of the natural recovery.
• No fire, ever. No stoves, cigarette ends or bonfires. Before you go, check the wildfire risk with IPMA, Portugal’s weather institute.
• Spend locally. Having lunch, buying local produce or staying the night in Entre Ambos-os-Rios helps keep people living in the mountains — and people on the land are the best fire prevention there is.

If you see smoke or fire, call 112, the European emergency number.

Sources

• O Minho / Lusa — Ponte da Barca association asks for trees to reforest the Serra Amarela (23 Oct 2026, in Portuguese)
• Observador — Over a thousand trees to bring the Serra Amarela back from the ashes (4 Nov 2025, in Portuguese)
• O Minho — 1,700 native trees planted in burnt areas of Peneda-Gerês (22 Oct 2026, in Portuguese)
• Reflorestar Portugal
• WWF Portugal — D-Evolução
• Terras de Bouro Tourism — Serra Amarela Trail
• ICNF — Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests

The Serra Amarela has burnt and been replanted. It burnt again. This time, the first trees are coming from the mountain’s own seeds, sown by children’s hands. The question for anyone who walks here is a simple one: which part of this forest will be yours?