2023-06-19 10:23:00
In the heart of a high forest in Haut-Bugey, in front of two rows of freshly cut withered wood, a forester has collected small insects in a plastic container: bark beetles, these tree killers proliferating with global warming which forces us to rethink all forest management.
“Bark beetles have always existed”, explains Nicolas Micoud, head of the Bugey territorial unit at the National Forestry Office (ONF), opening the box where these kinds of beetles of about 5 mm are crawling and colonizing the bark and dig galleries in the trunks. But according to him, everything changed with the “climatic fire”.
“With the new heat conditions, which are favorable to them, there are three or four spawnings a year, and the tree ends up no longer feeding on sap”, observes this field official.
“Every morning, we notice a new tree that blushes,” he observes again, a bit annoyed. Like this silver fir, with its stunted appearance, which he points to, in a concert of chainsaws. The same fate as the 50 m3 of trunks stored along a path in the communal forest of Cormaranche-en-Bugey (Ain) awaits: a cut. The best preserved wood will be used for the frame, the dry ones for packaging.
The Bugey, green lung, “is probably the massif most affected by global warming in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Things have accelerated since 2017 and it is considered that 40% of the species we manage are in climatic discomfort”, that is to say promised to an earlier slaughter, summarizes Nicolas Karr, regional director of the ONF. So much so that around 80% of harvests are now made up of dying wood, compared to only 10% in 2017!
A simple drone flight over the communal forest of Cormaranche-en-Bugey, at an altitude of 1000 m, is enough to measure the extent of the damage: easily identifiable brown spots betray the ongoing degradation, mainly of spruces. Their position located by GPS, all that remains is to send a team to cut.
Sometimes, it is a whole surface which is the subject of a “sanitary cut”.
Like in this corner of the Cormaranche forest where 4 hectares of dying beech-fir forest have been razed since 2019.
We have just replanted larch and Douglas fir there. Small tufts of 20 cm still, protected from the deer’s appetite by plastic sleeves.
“Casting the Heat”
This wasteland-like gap “may seem shocking to visitors, tourists, residents”, recognizes Mr. Karr.
But the new species, selected for their presumed ability to better withstand heat and drought, will, he hopes, make up a more suitable forest.
At his side, the deputy mayor of Cormaranche, Jacques Drhouin, squeals a little: “we are recording a drop in felling receipts in our municipal budget”, coming from sales made by the ONF, “because dry wood is worth much less than green wood”. The shortfall is “between 200 and 250,000 euros” per year.
The State has certainly released aid for the forest via several recent schemes – 23,000 euros out of the 44,000 of these new plantations – but the municipality also had to compensate. “The forest is our DNA”, underlines the chosen one. Sawmills, schools, training centers, it’s a whole ecosystem that depends here on the future of the wood-forest sector.
“The planting is not the only solution, however, there are other options, more diffuse, less spectacular”, explain the officials of the ONF.
With their eyes riveted on the different scenarios of the future climate, with their share of uncertainties, they thus support the most resilient species through so-called “natural regeneration release” operations.
In another very steep corner of the forest, we have, for example, made room for a lime tree that the hazel trees and white service trees prevented from growing as it pleases and taking in the necessary light.
“15-20 years ago, we would have cut the lime tree for the fir tree, which today is dying. We are going to bet on the lime tree, which is more suited to southern climates”, concludes Mr. Karr.
06/19/2023 10:22:27 – Cormaranche-en-Bugey (France) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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