The rules

Who has to clear

The duty falls on whoever holds the land inside the strip: owner, tenant, usufructuary, or anyone who holds it on any basis. It is not the owner of the house. If your neighbour’s house stands 30 m from your pine wood, it is your pine wood that has to be cleared — and your own house places the same duty on your neighbours’ land. (DL 82/2021, art. 49(7); DL 124/2006, art. 15(2))

Strips along roads, railways, power lines and gas pipelines are the responsibility of the companies that run them, even on other people’s land. The same goes for the 100 m around campsites, industrial estates, landfills and similar facilities. (DL 82/2021, art. 49(4) and (5)) The map does not show these strips: what concerns you as a land owner are the strips around buildings and villages.

Where: the strips

Around buildings

• 50 m from the outer wall where the surrounding land is forest land: woodland, scrub, natural pasture, sparse vegetation. (art. 49(7))
• 10 m where the land is agricultural: crops and improved pasture. (art. 49(7))

What counts is the land cover according to the official land-cover map (Carta de Uso e Ocupação do Solo, COS) of the Direção-Geral do Território — not the land’s zoning in the municipal plan (PDM). (art. 3(q) and (r)) A plot can be forest on one side and farmland on the other; the map treats every square metre according to the COS.

Which buildings count. Only buildings used as a home or for an economic activity. (art. 49(7)) Annexes and minor works — sheds, lean-tos, small outbuildings — are exempt. (art. 49(8)) A roofless ruin is not a building. On the map, structures under 20 m² and those tagged in OpenStreetMap as a ruin, shed, garage or similar are shown in grey and do not create a strip.

Around villages

• 100 m from the edge of a built-up area that borders forest land. The duty falls on whoever holds the land inside that strip. (art. 49(6); DL 124/2006, art. 15(10) and (11))
• A built-up area is a group of buildings that touch or stand less than 50 m apart, with at least 10 dwellings. (art. 3) Its edge is the closed polygonal line enclosing those buildings with the smallest possible area. (DL 124/2006, art. 3)
• Inside the built-up area the municipal regulation applies, which the map does not compute. (art. 49(9))

Widths can differ locally

The sub-regional programme (PSA) may set widths up to 50 % wider or narrower, depending on fire hazard. (art. 49(2)) In very low to medium hazard areas, the strip around buildings may go down to 30 m. (Despacho 675/2026, regulation, art. 8) On slopes steeper than 20 %, a strip may be widened downhill and narrowed uphill. (art. 9) The map uses the standard widths: 50, 10 and 100 m.

Two regimes in 2026

In 2026 not all of Portugal follows the same law.

• Where a sub-regional programme (PSA) has been approved, DL 82/2021, art. 49 applies. That is the case in the Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas, Oeste, the Algarve, Tâmega e Sousa, Baixo Alentejo, Médio Tejo, Alentejo Central and Alto Alentejo.
• In all other municipalities — most of the north and centre — the municipal forest fire plan (PMDFCI) is still in force, and with it the duties and fines of DL 124/2006. (DL 82/2021, art. 79(4), extended to 31 December 2026 by DL 86/2026)

In practice the differences are small: the same 50 m and 100 m widths, but under the old regime the width on non-forest land (10 to 50 m) is the one set in the PMDFCI, villages are the ones mapped in the PMDFCI, and every building counts, in use or not. Each municipality page shows which regime applies.

From 2027, DL 82/2021 should apply everywhere — unless the deadline is extended again, as it has been every year since 2022.

How: what to do in each zone

Since 1 January 2026 the technical rules are those of the ICNF regulation approved by Despacho 675/2026, which replaced the annex of DL 124/2006. The 50 m strip around a building is divided into three zones (see the diagram above). (regulation, art. 14(1))

Pruning. Trees are pruned up to half their height while they are up to 8 m tall; above that, to at least 4 m above the ground.

Shrubs. The denser the shrubs, the lower they must be (regulation, annex I):

Shrubs cover of the ground	Maximum height
up to 20 %	1.25 m
20 to 30 %	0.70 m
30 to 40 %	0.60 m
40 to 50 %	0.45 m
50 to 60 %	0.35 m
60 to 80 %	0.30 m
over 80 %	0.25 m

Always: crowns at least 5 m from the building and never over the roof; no firewood, timber or cut material piled in the strip or within 20 m of it (regulation, art. 22); hedges preferably avoided, and only broken up and more than 5 m from the building.

In a 10 m strip on agricultural land only part of these rules applies. (regulation, art. 14(3))

Land uses that replace clearing. Vineyards, orchards or irrigated crops without continuous fuel, ploughed land, grazed pasture and the other uses in annex II of the regulation can take the place of clearing, if they are recorded in the PSA. (DL 82/2021, art. 47(5) and (6))

Open question. In municipalities where the PMDFCI is still in force, the law keeps the duties of DL 124/2006, which refer to its old annex (10 m between the crowns of pine and eucalyptus, 4 m for other species, across the whole strip). DL 82/2021 itself says that annex applies only until the ICNF regulation exists. (art. 79(4) and (7)) In practice the official SGIFR portal and the municipalities apply the Despacho 675/2026 zones across the country, and so does this site.

If the land is not cleared

• The municipality notifies whoever has to clear and sets a deadline. If nothing is done, it may clear the land at their expense, take administrative possession of it during the work, and sell timber of commercial value to cover the costs. (DL 82/2021, art. 58) On land of high or very high fire hazard this work is done within 30 days; elsewhere within 60. (art. 49(13))
• If the owner is unknown or cannot be reached by post, notice is given by public notice and by a sign on the land itself. (art. 59)
• Under DL 124/2006, the owner of the house may clear the neighbour’s land and recover the cost, after giving notice and waiting for an answer. (DL 124/2006, art. 15(6) to (9)) Under DL 82/2021 only the municipality can step in.
• Failing to clear is an administrative offence, enforced by the GNR or the PSP. Fine amounts depend on the regime and were changed in 2026 (Lei 18/2026). We do not quote them here until it is settled which amounts apply in each municipality.

Priority parishes. In recent years a list of parishes where the GNR inspects first has been published. The duty to clear applies everywhere, whether the parish is on the list or not.

What the map does — and doesn’t

The map computes the strips around buildings and villages from public data and shows, for every registered parcel, how many m² fall in each zone. It is screening information, not a decision: the COS may not match what is on the ground today, some buildings are missing or no longer used, and local widths may differ. When in doubt, the municipality has the final word. The data and the method are described under Sources.