Indre is experimenting with the restoration of nature on a small scale

In the Chérine national nature reserve, to restore biodiversity, teams are installing fences against coypu.

The environment ministers of the European Union met on Monday June 17 in Luxembourg to negotiate the law of “nature restoration” suspended for months due to lack of sufficient majority of the 27 to formally approve this pillar of the component “biodiversity” of the European Green Deal. In particular, it plans to restore 20% of the EU’s marine and terrestrial areas and therefore massively expand actions currently carried out on a small scale. As in Indre, in the Chérine national nature reserve, where teams are working to bring threatened biodiversity back to life.

With his telescope, François Clément, research manager of the reserve, observes with satisfaction the whiskered terns moving above the pond: “It’s like a small seagull but a little finer and you can recognize it with its little shrill cry.” These birds had left the area hunted by coypu, an invasive species from North America: “It nibbles, it eats a lot…” To the point of having almost disappeared the vegetation which allows birds to make their nests.

Hence the installation of a barrier to prevent the animal from approaching. “All these fences form a rectangle of approximately two hectaresexplains François Clément. In this rectangle, the coypus cannot enter and there we see the vegetation which expresses itself fully. It is simple and efficient. There we have a good example, the Terns have returned to nest.” Around fifty nests have returned, a year and a half after the start of the operation.

A welcome initiative but still too rare, explains Jean Rousselot of the WWF. Restoration actions must become much more extensive, according to him: “On a national scale, these remain one-off actions. We are in habitats which have been badly damaged in recent decades and we need to go further. But to go further, we must also demonstrate that it works and so we need these actions and to show that, in these spaces, we get there quite quickly.”

Hoping to convince on a European scale of the interest of the nature restoration law, especially since it is urgent: “We already have species disappearing in Francewarns Jean Rousselot. We already have fears that there will be some who will be unable to reconstitute themselves. We have declines over the last twenty years that are still worrying: for example trout at minus 40%. This erosion of biodiversity is intensifying, but today it is time to act to restore this nature.” While waiting for more European ambition, WWF is acting at its level. The NGO plans to purchase up to 5,000 hectares of wetland in the coming years to carry out restoration actions.