For now, Paul Tourneur prefers not to think too much about it. But he knows that returning to the scene, when he can, will be “pretty awful”. Biodiversity project manager for the National Forestry Office (ONF) Landes Nord-Aquitaine, he knows precisely part of the territory which has just been destroyed by the flames. Of the approximately 2,000 hectares of the national forest of La Teste, wedged between the ocean and the pond of Cazaux, south of Arcachon, half went up in smoke. “We had just completed 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 made up mostly of maritime pines, the national forest has slightly fewer species than other deciduous forests, but inventories have confirmed that it is home to rare and specialized species. Among them, the red pipit, a small sand-colored passerine bird that lives mainly in dunes and causses. The ocellated lizard, the largest lizard in Europe, threatened with extinction in France. The cultriped pelobate, a small toad that spends its days buried in the sand. The great noctule, the largest bat in Europe, still largely unknown. Or the ring-necked plovers, of which a dozen pairs nest on the dune, and old pedunculate 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 reptiles, amphibians and young birds that have a low ability to move…”
“Biodiversity reduced to nothing”
Since the outbreak 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 maritime pine production forest, owned by private owners, were devastated. The Landes massif, made up of 80% pine trees, covers a total of nearly one million hectares in three departments. In La Teste-de-Buch, in the Arcachon basin, 7,000 hectares were also destroyed: in addition to the national forest managed by the ONF, the fire affected a user forest governed by a legal status unique in France, inherited of the XVe century. Here, the vegetation was dense, almost unexploited and more diversified than in the rest of the massif.
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