“Here, nature has done its work.” Ángel Benito Fernández López happily shakes the fist-thick trunk of a Morella faya tree, whose splendor of green foliage reaches seven meters into the sky. The tree is surmounted by a black tree skeleton, at least 15 meters high, which reminds of the fire that raged here ten years ago. In August 2012, the Canary Island of La Gomera was hit by forest fires, the flames also raged in the Garajonay National Park, which was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1986. About a fifth of the national park fell victim to the flames. The tree heath-Gagelbaumbush forests on the drier southern slopes were particularly affected, but the flames also ate into the laurel forest, the jungle-like mixed deciduous forest that still looks like the forests that covered large parts of Europe 20 million years ago.
Since the fire, Ángel Fernández, longtime director of the national park, has been observing how the areas of the forest affected by the flames are recovering – and has thus gained insights that could also be helpful elsewhere. After all, the fire in Europe has not been as intense as this summer for a long time.
Park Director Fernández is not as satisfied everywhere as with this Gagelbaum. “You can see a lot of green everywhere again, but appearances are deceptive. Because in many places where there used to be forest, scrub is now growing. Ten years later we know that 40 to 60 percent of the pioneer species such as the Gagelbaum or the Baumheide Trees died from the fire and didn’t sprout again.”
That’s why Ángel Fernández and his team give nature a helping hand. “We planted a lot of trees in this zone,” he explains, pointing to a glandular buckthorn that, to his delight, is already bearing berries. “If we left nature to itself here, we would soon have a forest consisting only of tree heather and scrub.” As he walks, he repeatedly uproots shrubs that are a thorn in his side, such as invasive species such as the glandular daphne. He and his team have replanted around 100,000 trees in the national park, especially gagel trees, which have thicker leaves than the tree heath and don’t burn as well. However, he has observed that the trees that have been planted only grow half as fast as the newly sprouted ones. Animals are still suffering from the effects of the fire. Two endemic species of pigeons have lost their habitat in part of the forest. “Maybe they will settle here again in 25 years,” says Fernández.
In another area in the south, the forest has hardly recovered at all. There, before the fire, national park workers had spent 25 years painstakingly felling Monterey pines introduced as part of dictator Franco’s forestry policy and replacing them with gale trees and tree heather to restore the original forest. The flames destroyed years of work in just a few hours.
The park director demonstrates how the forest in the national park is developing in a young area of the forest that was not affected by the fire. Here the Gagel trees and the tree heather are many meters high and so dense that no ray of sunshine falls on the ground. In between, a Canarian laurel tree grows here and there, the seeds of which a bird has deposited there. The laurel trees are still small, just two meters high. Gradually the laurel trees partly displace the gagel trees and the tree heather, and after 100 to 150 years the Indian persea, the stinking laurel, the high picconia and many other tree species have joined them. This is what the park looks like on the northern flanks, an often misty fairytale forest of intertwined moss-covered trees and knee-high ferns.
Although it was actually assumed that the laurel forest would not burn so easily, the flames also ate into these parts of the forest ten years ago due to the drought and hot winds that prevailed at the time. Fortunately, only around 50 hectares of the ecologically most valuable areas were affected. “Unfortunately, we see here that only 15 percent of the most valuable tree species have sprouted again,” says Fernández. Throughout the fire-affected regions, the Park Director is also observing with concern the decline of rare or protected species such as the Canary Orchid. Instead, ferns or Montpellier rockrose are spreading.
View of Valle Fran Rey with Spanish reed and palm trees.
(Photo: Velten Arnold)
However, in Valle Gran Rey, a tourist resort in the southwest of the island that was also hit by the flames ten years ago, everything looks the same as it did before the fire. If you look down from the upper valley, you can see the green fronds of the Canarian palms everywhere, densely growing Spanish reed meanders like a green river towards the sea. “But it is precisely this Spanish pipe that is a problem,” says Federico Grillo, a forest engineer and forest fire expert who helped coordinate the fight against the flames ten years ago. “It’s still green for the first year, but the older it gets, the drier it gets, and over the years it becomes a real powder keg.” After the fire, he suggested eliminating the Spanish cane, replacing it with canary willows and creating a park. There is still time to implement such a project. “Prior to the 2012 fire, the Valle Gran Rey last burned in 1978. Combustible material had accumulated for 34 years, so it’s only been ten years since the fire.”
Federico Grillo is convinced that people have to accept that there will always be forest fires. “Fire plays a role in nature. Among other things, it reduces the amount of combustible material. If we could somehow manage to avoid forest fires completely, in the long term it would only mean that there would be even more violent fires.” In view of climate change, he assumes that forest fires will become more frequent in the future. On Gomera, the increasing heat waves ensure that the humidity in the laurel forest decreases “and vegetation that does not actually burn becomes combustible”.
Next year, the forest fire expert will train German firefighters in the Harz Mountains. Grillo is convinced that Germany will also have to be prepared for more frequent and larger forest fires. “It is important that the firefighters learn to work with the appropriate hand-held equipment in impassable terrain and to master effective methods of firefighting, such as setting a return fire.”
The forest expert believes that the firefighters on La Gomera are better equipped today than they were then. “There are more staff and everyone is highly professional and motivated.” In addition, a few years ago the Canarian government decided to form special brigades to combat forests, three of which are currently stationed on La Gomera. “Most fires are intentionally started or caused by carelessness,” says Grillo. It is therefore extremely important to raise public awareness. In addition, it is important to implement the well-known motto in Spain “You put out a fire in winter” and to collect dry wood from certain areas and burn it in a controlled manner in winter.
“But an intact, well-preserved laurel forest offers the best protection against fire,” says Ángel Fernández, looking down at the dense greenery on the northern slope. “Here in the north we can leave nature to itself. The good thing is that it has strong forces and will definitely recover at some point.”