What remains of animal life in the disaster-stricken forests of Gironde? Monstrous fires raged in July and August, destroying nearly 30,000 hectares of wooded areas in southern Gironde and in the Bassin d’Arcachon. A few weeks after the extinction of these fires, and while another major fire hit the Médoc in mid-September, 20 minutes is interested in the consequences for wildlife.
If it is very difficult to know the number ofanimals who perished in the flames, the associations, hunters and specialists went to the site as soon as possible, and delivered an initial inventory.
“Coup de grace” for certain trapped species?
“It was more serious than expected for the fauna of the user forest of La Teste, immediately announces Françoise Branger, from the Bassin d’Arcachon Ecology association. If you count insects, reptiles, amphibians, millions of animals died. Even those that you might have thought might have fled were trapped, because the boars, the deer, had their hooves melted and couldn’t take a step further. Films have been seen of burnt boars running with fire all over them. But it was those who occupied the basement of the forest, also burned, who succumbed in greater numbers.
Matthieu Berroneau, reptile and amphibian specialist with the association Cistude Nature, is concerned about the fate of several endemic species of southern Gironde, which were already endangered before the disaster. “The viviparous lizard, for example, if it is indeed present in northern Europe, is very rare in Gironde, and only confined to this environment, where it lives in lagoons which are for it cold refuges within of an ecosystem which is very hot, namely the Landes de Gascogne pine forest, explains this specialist. There is also the Coronella smooth, some species of butterflies, a dragonfly… ” Impossible to comment at this stage on the state of the populations but this herpetologist fears that the fire was ” the coup de grace “, adding that they are animals with low mobility.
“Let’s not forget the consequences of the fumes”
According to the database of the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) on the burned areas, out of 300 species monitored in Landiras, 24 appeared on the red list of threatened species (the sedge fadet butterfly and the pitchou warbler for example). And, in the Basin, 200 species have been identified, including 14 on the red list. Among them, two species of bats: the large noctule and the common noctule, arboreal species that need old forest, like that of Teste-de-Buch, with cavities.
“The damage is very diverse, with areas that have been completely burned, and others where life has been maintained, sometimes with shallow surface damage, nuance Françoise Branger. But let’s not forget the consequences of smoke as well. » The wildlife care center of the LPO, based in Audenge, received around thirty animals directly linked to the fires, most of which had respiratory problems. “We weren’t expecting large arrivals, either the animals were able to flee or they weren’t able to, but the in-between is unlikely”, underlines Mathieu Sannier, biodiversity project manager at the LPO. Aquitaine. He also highlights heterogeneous situations depending on the sector with “small islets mainly covered with hardwoods”, which may have served as refuges. The drought could have been an advantage, in the sense that the fire sometimes passed very quickly, without having time to penetrate underground.
Slow return of wild boar and deer
As soon as it was able to send members to take the measure of the damage after the declaration of the extinction of the fires, the Gironde hunting federation installed thermal cameras on circuits 20 to 25 kilometers long, to carry out the first counts. Three have been completed in La Teste to date and two in Landiras. For fifteen days, the low vegetation (ferns, grass) has started to grow back, attracting herbivores. “The deer are coming back little by little when we saw very few of them at the start of the monitoring, comments Marylou Terlin, hunting technician within the federation. Wild boars are very present in the areas and there are a few hares, foxes and birds. »
Camera traps have also been installed in the heart of the disaster areas, near watering holes to observe the species that come to refresh themselves there. Result: three quarters of them are wild boar even if there are a few foxes and birds (pigeons, crows, jays, tits, finches etc.) The federation does not list only huntable species but all types of birds. It will be necessary to wait at least a year to have sufficient hindsight on the counts, for which it lacks points of comparison.
The wild boar populations are closely monitored by the federation and they should soon be hunted again. In La Teste, the president of the local association has chosen to ban deer hunting, at least for the start of the season.
An opportunity after the tragedy?
After the disaster, questions remain unanswered, such as the treatment of the user forest of Teste-de-Buch. “The animals are coming back, and the ecosystem is already being reconstituted, yet we are talking about heavily mechanized interventions to come in the forest, to modify this ecosystem, to cut down almost all the trees… worries Françoise Branger. If so, the worst is yet to come. We must not touch this forest for the moment, and wait to see it reborn. The LPO would also like to be associated with the reflections that will take place around the new plantations. She would like more strips of deciduous trees and wetlands, while improving safety measures against the risk of fire.
“We have to put things into perspective, we were all shocked by the spectacular side of the fires, but it remains 30,000 hectares, when each year 40,000 hectares are urbanized in France, argues Mathieu Sannier. These are irreversible while on these 30,000 hectares burned, nature will be able to regain its rights”. He considers that, while remaining a tragedy, the fires are not an ecological disaster and that it is even an opportunity to replant intelligently. For Landiras, he thinks that it will be possible to find, in 10 to 15 years, the species that were present before the fire but he agrees that certain losses at La Teste will be irreparable, as it was a very Ancient.