The reconstruction will take time and money. Emmanuel Macron, traveling on Wednesday July 20 to La Teste-de-Buch, promised a “major national project to be able to replant” and “rebuild” forests after the fires that hit the Gironde, destroying more than 20,000 hectares of vegetation.
After a forest fire, “it will take at least thirty to forty years to reconstitute the landscape that we knew”, explains Stéphane Viéban, Managing Director of Alliance Forêts Bois, a forestry cooperative. Costs may vary depending on the damage caused by the fire.
Behind these fires is played first “a human tragedy for forest owners in particular who, in a few hours, lost their life’s work”, insists Stéphane Viéban. A life to build and pass on “a place in which these owners liked to be and live”. “A real passion” and a heritage that is not always assured, underlines the general director of Alliance Forêts Bois: “For example, only 20 to 30% of the Landes forest is insured.” These assurances “are often exorbitantly priced”, explains Antoine d’Amécourt, president of Fransylva, the Federation of Private Forestry Unions in France. When they are taken out, they often take only part of the costs related to the fires.
After a forest fire comes a damage assessment phase. To finance the reconstitution, the farmers can hope to derive an income from certain burned plots. “If they are adult trees, by harvesting them quickly, the wood can be used and resold”, explains Antoine d’Amécourt. The industry market today is “quite buoyant” to be able to run off part of the wood, underlines this professional but he warns it will be “case by case”.
This sale of wood can sometimes represent a large part of the sum necessary to finance the aftermath of the fire. The town of Anglet, in the south-west of France, saw its forest of Pignada go up in smoke at the end of July 2020. Antoine de Boutray, director of the National Forestry Office (ONF) of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, manages the reconstruction of this “urban forest”. It was necessary to completely clean the area to avoid seeing an insect, the bark beetle, attack the charred trees. An operation “to prevent the whole massif from being attacked”. There is a health watch operation that should not be neglected after a fire, warns Antoine de Boutray. The sale of wood “must be about half the cost”, explains the director of the ONF Pyrénées-Atlantique. A sum of about 250,000 euros out of the 500,000 that will cost, approximately, the reconstitution of the 80 hectares of forest massif at the expense of the community of Anglet.
But these trees, if they are too young, and therefore too small, will often be unusable. “When the trees are less than fifteen years old, we cannot value them at all”Explain Antoine d’Amécourt de Fransylva. These trees will be crushed during the cleaning phase which occurs a few weeks later. “There will be between 800 and 1,500 euros for cleaning, therefore for crushing charred wood”explains the general director of Alliance Forêts Bois Stéphane Viéban. The replanting phase comes next. “We will have to work the soil to replant”explains the director of the forestry cooperative.
In all, cleaning and replanting are valued at between 3,000 and 8,000 euros per hectare, according to professionals. The bill can quickly rise to around several million euros in the case of fires in Gironde where more than 20,000 hectares have gone up in smoke. But this will not be the first major operation in the region. “In the South-West in 2009, after the Klaus storm, we reconstituted the 200,000 hectares of forest in less than ten yearsexplains optimistic Stéphane Viéban. So this is an important project but which we will be able to deal with with our organisations.”
In the case of the Gironde massifs, logging has become an expert in reforestation for half a century. Forestry cooperatives developed after the fire of 1949 which killed more than 80 people and ravaged more than 50,000 hectares. “We are lucky to have a species which is maritime pine and which is adapted to very acidic sandy soils and which grows very well.developed Stephan Vieban. Dor more than 50 years with the techniques that have been implemented to facilitate work, we have had good growth. There are pines today that are improved to grow straighter and make better quality lumber.”
>> How to rebuild a forest after a fire? The example of Banne, in Ardèche
In the Pignada forest in Anglet, the ONF will reforest from winter 2023 also with maritime pine. But during the discussions on the future of the forest, the elected officials and the Office quickly agreed on taking into account climate change and the risk of fire. “We chose to mix the forest more than what it has known beforenoted Antoine de Boutray from the ONF Pyrénées-Atlantique. We will count two-thirds of pines, in this case maritime pine and pinion pine. The latter is reputed to be very resistant against fires. The other third are hardwoods, the vast majority of which are cork oaks.” A species that also resists fires better thanks to its thickness of bark, explains the director of the ONF.
But will these precautions be sufficient if a new major fire breaks out like those that the Gironde is experiencing? Jean Pierre Vogel, Senator Les Républicains, submitted a report in 2019 on the fight against forest fires. He pointed out at that time that “knowledge of the costs of damage caused by forest fires is far from certain”. “It’s extremely complicatedexplains the senator to franceinfo. The idea would be to have precise information to assess and know if the departments have sufficient means to fight the fires.
When it comes to fighting forest fires, Antoine d’Amécourt de Fransylva is pragmatic: “It may sound silly but what should be done is to avoid lighting the fires.” He cites the example of the fire in the Montagnette massif in the Bouches-du-Rhône caused by a train and which destroyed more than 1,200 hectares. The question of forest maintenance has also arisen in Gironde, particularly for that of La Teste-de-Buch and its status dating from the Middle Ages. This mode of management is described as chaotic and has enormously complicated the task of firefighters.
But for Antoine d’Amécourt, “the problem is not only maintenance since the other fire concerns a well-maintained forest but the fire must be extinguished quickly”. Intervention in the first minutes is essential to fight a fire, especially if it is windy and hot. A rapid intervention strategy that France cannot hold without air means, explains Senator Jean Pierre Vogel. A controversy arose during the fires in Gironde: the president of the department complained about the lack of Canadair in the region. Emmanuel Macron admitted that he “we need to buy more planes” and “no more Canadair”. A purchase of new machines which is only possible with other European countries, according to Jean Pierre Vogel, the manufacturer only launching the production of new machines above a certain number, around twenty, of planes orders. A European strategy that the Head of State also advocates but which, too, risks taking time.