Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network
December 13, 2000
By Sally Zalewski

A year ago, winds of 100 miles per hour ravaged old-growth forests in France, altering the bucolic landscape of the countryside.

The day after the last Christmas of the century, winds of more than 100 miles an hour swept across France, ravaging the landscape. Nothing like it had been seen in the country since weather records had been kept, and when the furious gales were spent, 1.24 million acres of forest had been flattened.

Three years of France's forestry production, or 360 million trees, were felled "by an act of God" in a couple of hours. Ninety-one people lost their lives and 300,000 farmers suffered crippling damage.

Two weeks later, 28,000 homes were still without electricity and 75,000 telephone lines were down.

The task of clearing up stretched local authorities to the limit. Trees had been ripped out by their roots and many more were at dangerous angles. Roads were blocked, buildings and cars were damaged under the weight of fallen timber.

The new millennium was ushered in by spirals of wood smoke rising out of forested areas as councils scrambled to make parks safe again. The best timber went to lumber yards and wood merchants, and people were told to help themselves to firewood.

Forestry experts estimate that it will take at least two years just to clear public gardens and to replant lost trees. By coincidence, shortly before the storm hit, the conservation organization WWF-France had just recruited a new forestry officer, Daniel Vallauri, for its Living Forest Campaign.

Vallauri barely had time to start drawing up his program when the storm hit. Now a radical rethink is required and the program has been aptly renamed Forest Restoration.

The effects of the storm were widespread, from commercial wood plantations to bats. From an ecological point of view, Vallauri has mixed feelings.

Uprooted trees left in the wake of furious windstorms in France were burned.

"This could be excellent news for bats and owls who nest or take refuge in dead wood," he says. "On the other hand, we are worried about species that are making a timid return to France's natural habitats. For example, the black stork has started to nest again in certain trees. They always nest in the same tree, and if they return from their migratory journey to find their tree has gone, we are afraid they may nest elsewhere."

Several insect species and some rare beetles are expected to return to the forests in France. It is estimated that every forest needs 10 dead trees per 2.5 acres to provide shelter and food for its micro-inhabitants.

As insects recycle vegetal matter, the fertility of the soil increases, thus favoring good crops of mushrooms and a healthy humus carpet. However, too much dead and rotting wood can mean that insects breed in high numbers and start to feed on the healthy trees in the forest.

This delicate balance is difficult to maintain, but WWF-France has come up with a comprehensive forest restoration plan. Instead of focusing on wood production and agricultural methods of exploitation, the group is pressing for a more global use of the forest, encompassing leisure and sports activities, water and soil protection and stressing the importance of maintaining biodiversity.

It only takes two or three trees to sustain as many as 1,000 forest-dwelling species. WWF is advocating a more sympathetic approach to replanting and suggests this should only occur where necessary with mixed local species rather than rows of the same species.

Wood should be cut regularly but selectively rather than by the current practice of periodic clear-cutting.

Trees in forests should not all be the same age so that larger trees protect the younger ones. If France's forests had consisted of a more natural mix of trees, the effects of the storm would not have been so devastating.

Many of the forests collapsed like dominoes as trees of the same age and species reacted in the same way to high winds.

Sally Zalewski is a free-lance journalist based in Paris, France. A version of this story was written for WWF.

  Error: Unable to read footer file.