The fires which ravage two forests in the department have destroyed certain multi -room trees and upset the local fauna. It will be necessary to wait two summers before replanting.
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For the moment, Paul Tourneur prefers not to think too much about it. But he knows that going back to the scene, when he can, will be “quite terrible”. Biodiversity project manager for the National Forest Office (ONF) North Aquitaine Landes, he knows with precision part of the territory which has just been destroyed by the flames. On the 2,000 hectares of the Teste’s state forest, wedged between the ocean and the Cazaux pond, south of Arcachon, half left for smoke. “We have just finished a naturalist inventory of a large part of the taxa present in the forest,” he says. This constitutes a zero state of biodiversity just before the fire, which is very rare. “
Located on sandy soil and mostly made up of maritime pines, the state forest has just fewer species than other deciduous forests, but inventories have confirmed that it houses rare and specialized species. Among them, the Rousseline Pipit, a small sandy gang which lives mainly in the dunes and the Causses. The oceased lizard, the largest lizard in Europe, threatened with extinction in France. The Pélobate Cultripède, a small toad that spends its days buried in the sand. La Grande Noctule, the largest bat in Europe, still largely unknown. Or the interrupted collar gravel, including a dozen couples nest on the dune, and old pedunculated oaks over 300 years old.
“The biggest concern is for the old trees, which constituted a heritage that we will not be able to recover overnight, specifies Paul Tourneur. And for the reptiles, the amphibians and the young birds who have a low movement capacity … “
” Biodiversity reduced to nothing “
Since the triggering of the two fires in Gironde on July 12, 20,600 hectares of vegetation have burned. Around Landiras, south of Bordeaux, 13,600 hectares of a maritime pine production forest, owned by private owners, were ravaged. The Landes massif, made up of 80 % pines, extends in total over a million hectares over three departments. In La Teste-de-Buch, in the Arcachon basin, 7,000 hectares were also destroyed: in addition to the state forest managed by the ONF, the fire has affected a user forest governed by a unique legal status in France, inherited from the 15th e century. Here, the vegetation was dense, almost unused and more diverse than in the rest of the massif.
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