The Regional Ministry of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy is carrying out five forestry treatment projects on 2,719 hectares of public forests located in 12 municipalities of Sierra de Filabres, Sierra Nevada, Sierra de Gádor and Sierra María-Los Vélez, in the province of Almería.
Four of these projects consist of forestry treatments relating to thinning out pine forests with excessive densities, thinning out holm oaks, chipping and shredding of plant remains for incorporation into the soil as organic matter. And the fifth is a project for the restoration of land affected by a forest fire. In total, these ongoing projects have a budget of 3,125,688 euros.
Last year, the Regional Ministry received three other forestry treatment projects which have already been completed, in the Sierras de Gádor, Sierra María-Los Vélez and Sierra Nevada, in which 1,573,637 euros were invested to improve the state of 538 ha of public forests in 11 municipalities.
In addition, wood and biomass harvesting projects are being carried out on 1,819 hectares of pine forests in public forests by companies awarded contracts in tendering processes, which are supervised by the Regional Ministry.
Forest fire prevention
The regional delegate in Almeria, Manuel de la Torre, said that «at the Regional Ministry we are convinced of the need for sustainable forest management: we want to make the most of all possible resources, achieve maximum efficiency in administrative management, with the aim of ensuring that our forests benefit from investment and activity, as a means of improving our forests and generating wealth and employment for the rural population. This is the objective set by the Andalusian Forestry Plan and the commitment of the Andalusian Regional Government».
Forestry treatments and timber harvesting have a beneficial effect on fire prevention, by reducing the fuel load of the forest, but the Regional Ministry of Sustainability is also investing, through the mechanised maintenance of firebreak lines project, almost one million euros for the conservation of 2,012 hectares of preventive linear infrastructure in the province of Almeria during the years 2022, 23 and 24.
On the other hand, as part of the preventive work carried out by the Environment and Water Agency in 2022, selective clearing was carried out on 525 hectares of land.
Along the same lines, and closely related to sustainable forest management and fire prevention, is the maintenance and improvement of forest roads, to which the Regional Ministry of Sustainability is dedicating more than two million euros in our province between 2022 and 2024. The Regional Ministry is planning to put out to tender soon two new forestry treatment projects in the Sierra de Filabres and Sierra Nevada mountains, which will affect a further 730 hectares of Almeria’s forests, with a joint tender budget of €1,745,863.
Andalusian Forestry Plan
The Andalusian Forestry Plan establishes the need for forestry management to be translated into investments that allow for the appropriate conservation of forest land and, in particular, tree formations, including the necessary silvicultural treatments to guarantee the persistence and stability of forest formations and fire prevention actions, the risk of which is becoming increasingly critical. Forestry treatments favour the diversification of stands from reforestation and the consolidation of mixed formations, with more balanced structures, and reduce the thickness of excessively dense stands, in order to favour the evolution and persistence of the stand, guaranteeing its regeneration.
De la Torre wanted to thank all the staff of the Regional Ministry who participate in the execution of forest management work: employees of the Environment and Water Agency, environmental agents who supervise work in the field, technical officials who take on the project management… He stressed that «it is a very vocational job, not very visible, and among the staff there is a very high degree of commitment to public service, which we must recognise and publicly thank».
The multiple functions of the forests
As the territorial delegate explained, «we must bear in mind that, through the chipping or shredding of the remains of forestry treatments, many tonnes of carbon are incorporated into the soil in the form of organic matter». In the same way, the preventive nature of the actions being carried out by the Junta de Andalucía in these areas, «aims to avoid the sudden release of large quantities of CO2, which is one of the immediate effects of forest fires», as the delegate stated.
In this sense, the adaptation of the Andalusian Forestry Plan proposes considering the maintenance of forest ecosystems in a good state of conservation as a tool to mitigate the effects of climate change and the possibility of including biomass and timber products in the framework of the emissions compensation mechanism.