The People Animals, Nature party’s Algarve branch has slammed the destruction of hundreds of pine trees at Gambelas, near Faro airport, citing a rare chameleon as a reason to halt the work.
The company responsible for the work justified the legality of the process under the new national fuel management laws.
"Already they have felled around 200 trees. Many of them were 100 to 200 years old and from time immemorial have been part of the landscape of the area.
"They are home to numerous species of flora and fauna: birds, insects and even an endangered species that in Portugal only exists in the Algarve, the common chameleon, whose habitat his being destroyed," reported PAN on its Facebook page.
PAN criticised the fact that the area is not part of the Ria Formosa Natural Park, "Therefore, it is not subject to stronger and more adequate protection."
PAN said that it had received information from Faro Council, whose inspection service said everything was being done legally.
"There was no mass destruction of trees at the site, but only the clearing of the ground, thinning and cutting of certain pines in order to ensure compliance with legally established fuel management criteria, to existing buildings," stated the Council.
Comments
After decades of being told of their importance for climate, nature, and everything good, trees now seem to be considered the enemy, a danger to life.
Huge numbers of trees are being felled, land cleared, in the name of this new law.
It's cheaper and easier to clear-cut than to figure out which trees can be legally left standing. Forest exploitation firms will even pay for the wood.
Once shady cool roads are now hot and unfriendly. The edge of a forest bordering a road is a danger, but a narrow row of dense shade trees is not. Small and medium forested areas with road access are easy to extinguish if they do catch fire, and if they're not contiguous with other forest, there isn't much danger of uncontrolled spread.
I understand that things have to change for fire safety; but this law is poorly written and poorly administered.
We have to improve safety, but also to remember the value of forests, big and small.