Restoring Medronheira forest after wildfire, Portugal

We are an intergenerational community of 15 people living and working on 36 hectares in the Serra do Espinhaço de Cão, within the protected area of the Southwest Alentejo and Vicentine Coast. For the past seven years, this land—Corte Medronheira—has been our home, our wildlife sanctuary and also the beginning of a centre for Eco-social Regeneration project rooted in collaboration, agroecology, community living, water stewardship and place-based education. Our members bring decades of combined experience in group facilitation for eco-social regeneration, regenerative design, and local food sovereignty, including gastronomy based on local and seasonal ingredients. We work closely with neighbours, local producers, local and international organisations, youth networks, volunteers, friends and visitors who come to learn regenerative practices on site. In September 2025, a large wildfire burned thousands of hectares of forest in our region. Our entire land burned: the cork oak and arbutus forest, vegetable gardens, orchards, agricultural support structures, community spaces, and several housing infrastructures. More than €175,000 in structures and tools were lost, alongside an irreplaceable loss of biodiversity, habitat and long-term ecological processes. The fire also destabilised the landscape: • increased risk of severe erosion and soil loss

 • loss of shade, organic matter and ground cover

 • exposure of wildlife

 • collapse of water retention patterns

 • reduced capacity for the community to stay on the land

 Yet, in the months following the fire, a strong community-led mobilisation emerged. Dozens of volunteers and friends supported us with emergency actions, fundraising events, clean-up efforts, and early water-retention works across the burned slopes. This showed both the urgency and the potential of a regenerative recovery.