Overview
- This week the Mancomunidad de Montes de Vigo publicly presented the replicated Ollos no monte campaign, mobilising about 40 brigadistas, delivering training and planning day‑and‑night patrols on days with high or extreme fire risk.
- The Vigo scheme copies a 2025 Baixo Miño pilot that united more than 30 communities and reported putting out 14 small ignition incidents using coordinated patrols and rapid local response.
- Organisers say unusually heavy winter and spring rains have produced large amounts of combustible undergrowth, raising summer fire danger across the 1,600 hectares the communities manage next to roughly 75,000 residents.
- Leaders publicly pressed the Concello de Vigo and the Xunta de Galicia for clearer coordination between forest districts, town councils and local police and announced the creation of Fundación Montes de Vigo to secure sustained funding.
- They estimate about €1.5 million a year is needed to maintain prevention, defence strips and patrols, and warn that local capacity for rapid attack is limited compared with the scale of very large fires, so outside support will affect whether early response can stop blazes before they threaten homes.