They may seem very few, compared to any other fire, but the 16 hectares burned in the Dehesa de El Saler in Valencia last weekend are many. “A disaster,” commented a firefighter last Tuesday, stationed on the ashes to control possible outbreaks. A disaster because it affects the heart of a unique Mediterranean forest, located on the spit of land that separates the sea and the lake of Albufera, in the middle of a natural park, a space that has resisted human pressure from its surroundings and a plan Franco’s desire to build a macro-urbanization there.
It is devastating to walk from the CV-500 highway, shortly before reaching the turnoff for the national parador, to the sea in a straight line. The fire advanced from there in a wedge shape, destroying everything in its path. The West wind was his great ally. “Whoever did this knew what he was doing,” said one brigade. The sand dunes on the beach, very close to Casal d’Esplai, cut off the flames. The quick action of firefighters and foresters limited the magnitude of the catastrophe. On Wednesday, the Civil Guard arrested JC, a 59-year-old lawyer and resident of one of the apartment towers that were built before a large civic and environmental movement at the end of the dictatorship in Valencia, as the alleged perpetrator of the incident. El Saler per al poble, stop the rest of the plan. Another neighborhood movement also claimed the old channel, where a swarm of roads was planned, under the motto The litt of Túria is ours and the green volem.
It is the ninth fire detected in the last three months in La Devesa (its name in Valencian), which extends over an area of about 800 hectares, which has once again opened the debate in the City Council on the conservation of the forest. For the mayor of Valencia, María José Catalá, from the PP, there has been a significant lack of prevention and cleaning measures in that area, something with which the recently appointed councilor responsible for Devesa-Albufera, José Gosálbez, from Vox, agrees. which speaks of “absolute helplessness and abandonment.”
“The measures of the ecosnobbery that forests have to be left without intervention. They have failed, we have seen it in other points throughout the Valencian Community before, but also in Devesa,” said Catalá, alluding to the left-wing executive that preceded her. “We must intervene, we must prevent, we must clean. “We, four months later, are even doing the installation of Sideinfo,” he added, alluding to the fact that the new Government he leads has just put out to tender a system of water cannons and sensors that will refresh the Devesa to reduce the risk of fire.
“We promoted the project,” says the Compromís councilor and head of Urban Ecology, Climate Emergency and Energy Transition in the previous municipal government, Sergi Campillo. “We tried to put it out to tender but the general increase in prices meant that it was abandoned. What Catalá has done is increase the budget and put it out to tender, but the technical plan, the idea and so on were made by the previous executive; and the idea was to extend it as a prevention tool to inhabited areas.” Campillo insists that he left the budget for the maintenance contract at historic highs, with 100,000 euros more and a forestry technician, and defends the maintenance of the undergrowth, with a type “of forest masses that are only found in places very far from urban populations , little altered”, so it is “a miracle that it is as it is in an urban conurbation of almost two million inhabitants.” “Talking about dirt when referring to the vegetation in a protected natural park that also has several priority habitats declared by the EU, and vulnerable animal species, is inappropriate. Is a mastic dirt? Is a palmetto dirt? ”He asks himself.
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The botanist Jaime Güemes, now in charge of the Botanical Garden of the University of Valencia, has been studying the area for years. “It is a very unique space due to its characteristics: something similar to the Manga del Mar Menor, but there the strip is much narrower and it does not have the ecological zoning (distribution of vegetation based on ecological variables) that the Devesa has” , explains the botanist. “It is a perfect transition from the coastal dunes to the lake, where the action of the wind, sand, salt spray and relief have shaped a unique landscape,” he adds.
The dunes were originally located next to the sea and protected the interior part of the strip and from there the Mediterranean forest was formed, where bushes coexist with pines. and on those pines grows a very powerful vegetation of lianas (honeysuckle, sarsaparilla, ivy). “For 40 years, this forest has had exemplary recovery management, imitated in other territories. The Devesa Technical Office has done tremendous work with all municipal corporations. And all of them have supported a management model that allows the dune range and from there the forest to be recovered in a natural way,” explains the expert.
Acció Ecologista Agró, with extensive experience in the natural park, speaks in the same sense. “The Devesa forest is perfectly managed. What has happened these days is unprecedented: that one or more people, taking advantage of the extreme weather, the west, the lack of rain, with knowledge of space… They acted very well, in any other area it would have been an environmental catastrophe “, says a spokeswoman for the Territory commission. She criticizes the “biased message of the need to clean up taking advantage of the fire.” “In any case, surveillance must be reinforced more, but in no case would eliminating vegetation and what is called removing biomass be a threat to the ecosystem,” she adds.
On Tuesday, with the earth still smoking, some tourists could be seen pedaling along the paths that cross the Devesa. A German couple showed their admiration for a privileged environment, often forgotten by the citizens closest to it. The undergrowth in many sections is so dense that it is impassable, except for the flames, supposedly caused. In the razed wedge there are no century-old pines or brambles, nothing. Even the hardy plants that line the dunes now look like sandpaper. A panel at the Casal d’Esplai explains the importance of the undergrowth and alludes to the fact that the vast majority of fires are intentional or caused by negligence. Of the 330 fires recorded between 1968 and 2015, only two were due to natural causes (lightning). The great forest fire of 1986 in La Devesa occurred in that area, in which 100 hectares of the park burned.
About 1,600 people live in El Saler, a population that multiplies in summer. Ana Gradolí is the president of the Devesa Neighborhood Association. She has a calm speech, even when on Sunday the chats of accusations against the alleged author of the fires were burning and justice was requested or information of all kinds was disseminated about the cause of the fire. The forest reaches almost to the parking lots of the homes. “It is not about cleaning everything, destroying everything, far from it. Yes, there are many dry branches, many dry, tangled brambles that strangle the pine itself. We always refer to the need to clean building environments. More vigilance in general would be needed, of course. The City Council must know how to act. “You have to be very sick in the head to burn this treasure, because it won’t be possible to build.”
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