Greece's National Observatory of Athens released a sobering analysis this week: 38% of all forested land in the Attica r...

Greece's National Observatory of Athens released a sobering analysis this week: 38% of all forested land in the Attica region has been destroyed by fire over the past nine years. The METEO unit's findings, updated following the recent Oinoi fire, cover the period from 2017 to 2025. Thirteen major wildfires during that stretch burned more than 700,000 stremmata (roughly 70,000 hectares) of Attica's mainland territory. Of the 1,230,000 stremmata of forest that Attica once held, 465,000 have been reduced to ash. The data comes from European monitoring services Copernicus and EFFIS, which track burned area across the continent. The scale of the loss becomes even starker when viewed against Attica's total land surface. Excluding the islands, Troizinia, and the Athens Basin, burned areas account for 28% of the region's entire 2,500,000-stremma landmass. METEO published a map and summary table charting how those losses accumulated fire by fire over the nine-year period. Attica is home to roughly 4 million people and includes the Greek capital. The forests surrounding Athens serve as critical green buffers for air quality, groundwater, and temperature regulation in one of Southern Europe's most densely populated regions. Scientists and environmental groups have repeatedly warned that the cumulative destruction of this scale is effectively irreversible within a human generation. The Oinoi fire that prompted this updated analysis is the latest in a series of blazes that have repeatedly struck Attica, following catastrophic events such as the 2018 Mati fire and the 2021 Varympompi fire, which together killed dozens of people and displaced thousands. #Greece #Wildfires #Attica