"This year there were 50 percent more wildfires in Croatia than last year, and they burned 135 percent more land," state agency Hina quoted Interior Minister, Davor Bozinovic, as saying on Thursday, after his meeting of county fire marshals in the southern coastal town of Divulje.

The meeting discussed ways of reducing the fire risk in woodland and farmland, including by cutting routes through forests to facilitate the deployment of fire response teams. Hina did not say what the conclusion of the meeting was.

Nevertheless, Bozinovic later told reporters that “over 120,000 people” are involved “in different ways” in the Croatian firefighting system. National fire chief, Slavko Tucakovic, said that the fire service had responded “well” to this year’s wildfires, noting that this year’s fire season was “exhausting for both firefighters and their equipment.”

He said that priority would be given to cutting routes through wooded areas to the seashore and hotels to prevent wildfires affecting tourist resorts. Tucakovic announced that a meeting would held in about three weeks time with the managers of national and nature parks to see what the government could do to prevent fires there.

Tucakovic also said that “in more than 80 percent of cases the cause of wildfires was human factor.”

Zdravko Tusek, an official of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that more than 170 million kuna (€23m) has been earmarked for “the construction of forest infrastructure for fire prevention purposes” in the coastal counties over the next three years.

(€1 = 7.53 kuna)