Environmental reconstruction in the Făgăraş Mountains

The project's target this spring amounts to 100 hectares and benefits from financial support from the European Commission through its LIFE programme. 435 thousand seedlings are being planted in four environmental reconstruction areas: at Groapele, a region affected by massive logging and arsons, Dobroneagu, Valea Dambovitei and Leresti. The seedlings of local species either come from Carpathia nurseries or are purchased from local producers. Here is Mihai Zota, conservationist director with the aforementioned foundation.

Mihai Zota: "I can tell you there is a long way from planting these seedlings to a real forest, particularly in our case as we are trying to rebuild the natural forest environments, which existed in this area but have been cut down. It was a certain trend back in the communist era, but also after it, to replace forests of beech and sycamore with spruce as spruce was believed to be a species which takes to the soil faster and its timber can be used in constructions. We are now doing some history research in an attempt to identify the real forests that were covering these areas in ancient times and try to rebuild them accordingly. This aspect is very important to us because we believe that nature knew better than us, people, which are the right type of trees to cover a certain area, as this process happened in millions of years. And whenever man intervenes, nature fights back and we are witnessing all sorts of unwanted phenomena, like the appearance of huge swarms of insects, windsnaps, windthrows etc.

Mr. Zota is actually referring here to an environmental reconstruction instead of reforestation because the process of creating a new forest entails many more activities besides the actual planting of trees.

Mihai Zota: "We are conducting tests on various hectares in all these areas in an attempt to identify how many natural seedlings we are having on the ground. Seedlings appear naturally after any logging, but they are not enough to make the forest regenerate by itself. We always find seedlings from various species after deforestation. Afterwards we are making comparisons between what was the forest like many years ago and then we drew our conclusions what species to plant so that we rebuild the forest like it was back then. We are not trying to outclass the engineering skills of mother nature but we are making some predictions because research shows that in the next 50 years, forests are likely to go up at least 100 meters, covering more land uphill. And if we are now seeing beech trees at 14 hundred meters up in the Fagaras mountains, in 50 years we are going to see it at altitudes of 16 hundred meters. So, we are trying to take into account these phenomena, influenced by global warming of course. After we have identified the composition and the number of seedlings we are going to need, we do our work in two big stages, in spring and autumn. Why we need two stages? Because we have noticed, that due to climate changes, the period of time we can plant these seedlings has shortened."

The seedlings used in this project come from two nurseries and greenhouses and they have been grown naturally in good conditions, without chemical additives used. So, the process of building a forest from scratch isn't simple at all and needs maintenance works for at least seven years. Without the proper monitoring and constant maintenance, such barren areas are difficult to be built into real forests. Besides all its environmental functions, a forest like this can sustain an entire social system. 120 daily workers and scores of forestry employees are presently being involved with suchlike reforestation projects.

(bill)