“More resources for forest management”, cried a hundred residents in the heart of Collserola last week. The largest green lung in the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona, ​​a continuous extension of forest of more than 8,000 hectares, could be devoured by flames in a matter of hours. The forest area in Spain, as it happens in other countries in the north of the Mediterranean, has not stopped advancing since the sixties and especially in recent decades: it has grown by 33% since 1990.
The lack of forest management is the main ally of drought and high temperatures so that all this green mass becomes fuel for fires. Climate change causes both drought and high temperatures to become more frequent and intense. The solution lies in taking care of these resources and experts have been warning for years: they are not doing their homework in the field of forest management.
The case of Collserola is paradigmatic: an extremely dense vegetation without interruptions located at the epicenter of one of the most populated areas in Spain. But the pattern is repeated throughout the Peninsula. The Castelló fire, which ravaged almost 5,000 hectares in March, took place in an area that was 90% continuous forest mass.
In Spain there are currently close to 20 million hectares of forest, a surface that reaches approximately 40% of the territory. It is a figure estimated by Eduardo Rojas, dean of the Official College of Forestry Engineers and former deputy general director of the FAO forestry area, based on the ministry’s forestry inventories, which are several years behind schedule.
The sustained increase in forest area becomes a problem as long as there is no management of these resources. Most of these 20 million hectares have no forest management plan.
The rural exodus, agricultural intensification and the change in the energy supply system of the population, have not only caused the forest to gradually gain ground in the old fields of cultivation, but also to be neglected.
The answer to this abandonment is forest production and the promotion of a local rural economy, advocates from the Pau Costa Foundation, a non-profit organization that works for the prevention and management of forest fires. Pasture, the sustainable extraction of biomass from forests and agricultural fields that break with the continuity of forest masses contribute to the prevention of fires.
“We need to recover these activities and make them economically profitable for their services in reducing the risk of fire”, explains Juan Camaño, forest fire operations technician and head of the Pau Foundation’s knowledge exchange area coast Initiatives such as the Ramats de Foc label aim to revalue these livestock activities that contribute to reducing the risk of fire. Keeping forests in good condition not only reduces the risk of fires, but is also a contribution to the fight against climate change.
In Barcelona, ​​the neighborhood association Collserola Paisatge Viu insists that for years the nine municipalities between which the park is divided have been neglecting their fire prevention obligations. “The lack of agroforestry management resources in a forest like Collserola, which has large slopes, can put the lives of the 160,000 people who live in the mountain areas at risk”, explains Jaume Llansó, president of the association.
The explosive combination between the Mediterranean climate and the mountainous profile of the Peninsula generates very powerful fires on slopes. “In this context, having a forest territory without management is barbaric, with or without climate change”, says Eduardo Rojas.