Between 2001 and August 2005 more than 970,000 hectares (2.4 million acres) of land have burned in Portugal where forests cover some 3.2 million hectares or some 36 percent of the the country's surface, according to forest department figures.

The amount of land lost to flames has been increasing since 2000. Between 1980 and 1999 an average of 100,000 hectares of land per year were blackened by flames.

By comparison this year alone wildfires have destroyed at least 180,000 hectares of forest and brush, including 15,000 hectares of protected land, and killed 15 people, according to official estimates.

The devastation makes 2005 the second worst wildfire season in over a decade after 2003, when a record 425,000 hectares were lost to flames and more than 20 people died.

"In areas that burned in the centre and north the rabbits are almost all dead," said Domingos Patacho, a forest engineer with the Quercus environmental group. The devastating fires, which have hit as Portugal struggles through its worst drought since 1945, have also put the survival in central Portugal of the Bonelli's eagle, one of Europe's most endangered birds, at risk, he added.

The fires have hit the Serra da Estrela national park, the nation's largest, especially hard, destroying 10,000 hectares since January.

The park, established in central Portugal almost 30 years ago, is home to mainland Portugal's highest mountain range as well as the habitats of several rare species of plants and animals.

"The flora will regenerate but it will be more difficult for the fauna," the director of the park, Fernando Matos, told reporters earlier this month.

He has already drawn up a recovery plan for the park which he hopes will become a model for other natural parks. It calls for the reintroduction of local tree species like oak and chestnut which are more fire-resistant than pine and eucalyptus trees.

Environmentalists are also concerned that ash from the fires will seep into dams and underground aquifers with the arrival of first fall and winter rains.

Domingos Patacho said there was a strong risk that a dam near the central town of Castela do Boda would be contaminated by ash from a fire that blackened the mountains that surround it earlier this month.

The dam supplies water to three million of Portugal's population of just over 10 million, he said.

Soil erosion is another concern as ash on the ground of fire-ravaged areas prevents water there from penetrating the soil, causing it to flow to valleys and rivers where it grows in volume and gains force, dragging away precious topsoil.

"Four or five successive fires in the same place and 30 centimetres (12 inches) of topsoil accumulated over 7,000 years disappears. It is an irreversible loss," Eugenio Sequeira, the president of the Portuguese Nature League, told AFP.

The blazes have already sharply increased air pollution in Portugal.

Smoke blown down from fires burning in central and nothern Portugal choked the air of tourist resorts that dot the coast of Portugal's southernmost province of Algarve earlier this month, the heart of the tourist season. "The fires release an enormous quantity of carbon dioxide which is responsible for global warming," said Patacho.

So far this month there have been 19 days when the ozone level at ground level was found to be above acceptable levels, compared to five for all of August 2004, environment ministry data show.

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