Forest management is one of the main challenges of the Serra de Collserola natural park. Decades ago, in the mountain that is the lung of Barcelona and part of its metropolitan area, activities such as vines, agriculture and livestock were common and ensured a certain care of the space. But even though it has been trying to recover for some time, the forest mass grew for many years in an uncontrolled way. The result is hectares and hectares of forest without management, without control of the undergrowth, without felling, without monitoring the distance between specimens… a powder keg in case of fire. Now, for the first time, a group of owners have come together to join forces, get support from the public administration and be able to manage their forests.
The pioneering initiative starts modestly, but could end up being key: 60% of the 8,300 hectares of the nature park are privately owned. It is estimated that there are more than 1,000 owners in the mountain range. Without them, it is impossible to manage the forest mass. The project that is now starting has several actors. Collserola Iniciatives is the association of agroforestry owners in Collserola, a recently created entity that brings together more than twenty owners. Four of them are the ones who have chosen to start joint forest management in 50 hectares located in Molins de Rei and Cerdanyola del Vallès. “It is important to be associated, for example, to obtain aid from the administrations”, says the president, Manel Ferrer.
He found letters from his grandfather, written around the 1940s, which already warned of the importance of association. But the initiative never came to fruition as it is now, he recalls. “The goal is to reach all the owners”, he is ambitious. They want this experience to be a first time and then grow.
“If we don’t do it together it’s much more complicated”, admits Fidel Castellví, one of the owners involved. For some landowners, managing their forest plots can be a financial problem. In addition, they do not always know the aid they can access. Sometimes bureaucracy is also very tedious. And having an association that lends a hand and takes care of all these tasks is a great help.
Boscat, which is the Catalan federation of forest owners’ associations, directs the management tasks. It has started with plots of preferential protection, which are the ones that can cause more problems in the event of a fire. “We follow sustainability criteria in management”, describes Joachim Englert, Boscat’s technical forestry engineer. In addition to preventing fires, the flow of water is favored, biodiversity is promoted, CO2 retention is increased, tree health is improved and jobs are created.
Collserola Iniciatives has obtained 123,000 euros in funding from the Generalitat de Catalunya to start these tasks. The nature park consortium has also helped them. “To guarantee the protection of Collserola we need forest management and we lacked the private one”, says its managing director, Raimon Roda, hopefully.
