Pisanu warned of a growing "fire industry" in Italy run by what he called "the speculative interests of Eco-Mafia or Eco-Criminality."

"The dramatic experience of these last weeks prompts a reflection on the current laws and on the best way to counter what could become a real fire industry," Pisanu said during a tour of fire departments.

He said Italy needed "the urgent institution of a registry of burned land," under the control of the local authorities.

That would safeguard existing laws designed to protect the environment which were being flouted, the minister said.

"Based on this law on burned ground it is not possible to have grazing, hunting or building" on the land, but this needed to be monitored closely by local authorities.

Officials have claimed most of the recent fires which destroyed hundreds of hectares of forest and brush in Italy were started deliberately, and possibly even commissioned by the Mafia.

Setting forestry and brush land ablaze is seen as a way for the Mafia to muscle in on new contracts for either reaforestation or the development of landfill rubbish sites, important souces of income for Mafia gangs exploiting the environment.

Meanwhile, dozens of forest fires continued to burn in Sardinia, Umbria, Liguria and Lazio, the province of Rome.

On Thursday, dozens of panicking bathers had to be rescued by sea on Sardinia's exclusive Costa Smerelda after a forest fire raged down to a beach.

TERRA.WIRE