High on the Dublin Wicklow Mountains, perched over the Glenasmole Valley, fires burned for over 20 days during the summer.
In total, 240 hectares of the land was left charred, the blaze tearing through the bone-dry vegetation.
"Well, everything is lost here. There's nothing left. This is pretty much an apocalyptic landscape at the moment," said Ann Fitzpartick, a conservation officer with the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
One per cent of the park was damaged, with the impact on biodiversity said to be significant.
"So not only do we lose the flora, the vegetative layer, the covering, which is of course very important for biodiversity, for the animals and the plants that we're going to find here, but we also have lost the kind of the essential components that provide the ecosystem services that are really important for landscapes like this," Ms Fitzpatrick said.
"We are at real risk of losing a lot of this soil or peat off the hills because there's no vegetation holding it here anymore.
"So what's happening here is the peat is cracking. We've got a lot of ash and dust that's going to be blown off and when the rains do come that will all be washed off the surface.
"So we're going to lose a lot of the soil from here."
Experts say the worry now is that this damaged area, which is in the River Dodder catchment, will not be able to absorb the rain like it once did, increasing the risk of flooding as the water spills more quickly downhill.
"In a functioning bog, you'll have the vegetation, you'll have a system of pools that will trap the rainfall, and that reduces the risk of floods downstream.
"But in a landscape like this, that is very badly damaged, there's nothing to retain that, so the force of the rainfall will accelerate," said Ms Fitzpatrick.
She said she is hoping that the damaged area will, in time, and with some effort, take the shape of a restored bog.
Further south, on a recent rainy day in Tipperary, damage was also being assessed after 1,500 hectares of land caught fire on Slievenamon in July.
Sixty-five hectares of the land was Coillte forest.
Pat Neville is their communications manager.
"As you can see around us, the trees are completely burned and destroyed," he said.
"It costs a large amount of money to fight the fire.
"There's the loss of value of the standing timber and the cost of replanting and restoring the forest. All of this work will have to be completed.
"In addition though, there's very significant environmental damage caused by forest fires.
"Plants, animals and wildlife have very little chance to escape the flames. The heat is intense and causes significant environmental damage as well."
In total, 130,000 of Coillte's commercial trees were lost, their worst fire in a decade.
All, they say, will be replaced.
"For Coillte, 65 hectares is a very significant loss of forest," Mr Neville said.
"These trees are about eight to 10 years old around me, so... we have to completely start from scratch again, remove them, mulch them and replant this forest again."
There were also fires in Killarney this summer and while the cause of the fires on Slievenamon has not been pinpointed, it was as a result of human intervention.
"It's important to say that forest fires in Ireland never start naturally," said Mr Neville.
"They always arrive from man-made sources.
"So, whether that's accidental through a BBQ or a campfire or maliciously lit.
"We don't know the cause of the fire here at Slievenamon yet, but we do know for certain it's a man-made source of ignition," he said.
Back in Wicklow and on the mountains, there is evidence of human carelessness, a discarded barbecue said to be the cause of an earlier fire.
New legislation governing national parks has been promised with the aim of giving them more protection.
