The forest of the protected natural area of Poblet (Conca de Barberà), of enormous environmental value, is sick. Drought, in a context of climatic emergency, has favored the advance and devastating effects of boring insects, in the form of a plague. The main victim for now, the resin pine (Pinus pinaster). Planted 60 years ago for the reforestation of Poblet, with less capacity to adapt to the lack of water, it is experiencing a mortality with few precedents.
The seriousness of the situation, with thousands of pine trees collapsing without the possibility of survival, has forced Climate Action to draw up an emergency plan. The most traumatic action, announced yesterday by the Generalitat, is the felling of the affected trees in an area of about 50 hectares, in the Torners ravine area.
If no action is taken, the plague could spread throughout the natural area of Poblet, warns Climate Action. In total, it now affects, to varying degrees, 10% of the park's 3,000 hectares.
"These forests that are collapsing and dying are currently out of season, which means that the climatic conditions have changed so much that they can no longer survive," lamented yesterday Anna Sanitjas, director of Ecosistemes Forestals i Gestió del Medi.
The high risk of forest fires posed by the presence of thousands of dead trees, converted into a huge amount of fuel, is also intended to be cut down. It is a strategic enclave. Experts warn that a forest fire here would exceed the extinction capacity. "We cannot maintain a continuous mass of dead trees, it would be a large fire," warns Ester Trullols, director of the Poblet Natural Area of National Interest.
Acció Climàtica's crash plan goes beyond this selective felling. They want to deploy a major action, which will also serve as a test bench for other Catalan forests affected by drought and pests. “We want to promote active forest management to have healthy forests. If we have very thick forests, where the trees are constantly competing for water, we end up in these collapse situations. If we have strong trees, with more space between them, capable of resisting drought and climate change, we will have forests of the future”, reasoned Sanitjas.
Logging will begin in September, after the forest fire campaign. In the area where the mortality will be carried out is 80% of these pines, but after the summer it is expected that it will be 100%.
Affected trees have thousands of insects burrowing inside them: between 10,000 and 30,000 beetles in the most extreme cases. The voracity of these insects stops the circulation of the sap and the tree ends up drying up. The colonization of the trunk is what ends up being deadly.
In the precious natural area of Poblet there are hundred-year-old trees and monumental specimens, of incalculable value. Clearing the forest of dead trees will favor a natural regeneration, with native species such as the holm oak, which is showing a better capacity for adaptation.
The main species affected, the resin pine, although typical of the Mediterranean, is native to the north of the Peninsula. It is much more vulnerable if it suffers water stress. The first effects began to be seen in spring, with trees that turned from green to reddish colors. In just three months the mortality has skyrocketed.
Many of the trees in Poblet were born 80, 90 or 100 years ago, in conditions that have nothing to do with today's, in a climate that was colder and more humid. The landscape will inevitably change, according to experts, because of the climate crisis. There will be species of trees that will not be able to adapt and will gradually disappear from our forests. The future will tell if, in Poblet, it will be the case of Pinus pinaster.
