By Jason Heppenstall
SPAIN, it is often claimed, was once covered in a thick mantle of forest. By the time the Romans arrived most of these trees had gone and they likened the parched yellow country to an old lion skin, pegged out to dry in the sun. Today, with an ever-rising awareness of the damage we have wrought on the environment, many individuals and organisations are working to restore the integrity of the once-bountiful ecosystems. I went to meet a few of them.
Kaj Aage Helming, a Danish seaman who found his land legs in Andalucía in 2003, is on a mission.
The idyllic finca on which he lives is set in the rolling green hills of Mijas Campo, just inland from the Costa del Sol. Despite his mild manner Kaj is, in fact, a “guerrilla gardener” and he’s fighting a war with nature on his side.
We’re standing on a high hill next to the static caravan that he calls home and surveying the scene around us. In one direction lies the urban sprawl of Marbella, punctuated by unnaturally green blobs that Kaj tells me are over-watered golf courses. In another the unspoiled hills are crowned by a large billboard announcing the imminent construction of an industrial park.
But how, I ask, could they possibly build an industrial park in these rolling hills? “Oh, they’ll come in with heavy machinery and flatten the terrain in no time. They’ll blast the tops off the hills and dump the debris in the barrancos to level the land.
“The river will disappear and the land will become parched.”
As if to illustrate this depressing prospect the sound of a large controlled explosion suddenly reverberates across the valley and a dust cloud rises into the clear blue sky. “Road widening,” mutters Kaj, shaking his head.
But the great Dane is taking a King Cnut-like stance against the tide of concrete flowing his way. By protesting vociferously against the PSOE-backed industrial park, he may – fingers crossed – have helped to halt its construction for good.
And at the same time he has planted around 1,500 cork oak trees on his land, which he hopes will grow into a forest. It is a clever move – on the face of it, at least – as cork oaks are protected under Spanish law, so in theory he should be giving a level of protection to the land against the bulldozers advancing in his direction.
He is not the only one, as it turns out. British celebrity activist Zac Goldsmith contacted the Olive Press a few months back to tell us about a scheme he is undertaking on the estate his father Sir James Goldsmith, once owned near Benahavis. Close to a controversial route where a new motorway is planned between Ronda and San Pedro, his scheme might also have some affect. “We’ve bought a lot of land and are replanting it as quickly as we can with cork oak (among other natives),” he explained.
In Mijas it is certainly on a much smaller, although no less noble scale. As we stride around Kaj’s land, all two hectares of it, the smell of wild aromatics suffusing the air, Kaj points proudly at all the trees he has planted. “The first Autumn I collected acorns and planted them in pots,” he explains. “They grew well but died when I planted them outside. So the next year I planted them outside from the start and now they are thriving.
“This one,” he says, indicating a six inch high bushy twig “will eventually turn into something like that over there.” He points at a gnarled old oak that stands out on the hillside – a granddaddy of an oak tree reminiscent of Treebeard in Lord of the Rings. “This is one of the oldest cork oaks in Andalucía,” he exclaims. “It’s even mentioned in a guidebook.”
I ask how old it is but Kaj can only guess “Up to 150 years, nobody can be sure.”
Cork oaks, along with their cousins holm oaks (encinas in Spanish), are the ideal tree to plant in Andalucía. They have evolved here over millennia and are extremely hardy when it comes to drought; they actually hibernate in the summer when it’s too hot.
Their bark has been harvested as a renewable resource for centuries and is used for everything from bath mats to, naturally, wine bottle corks. What’s more, the trees are the ideal habitat for birds and insects and the acorns are a favourite for wild boars… and, of course, the Iberican pigs that go to make the world’s best ham.
I wonder whether I’m meeting a modern-day Elzéard Bouffier, the semi-mythical French sheep farmer featured in the book The Man Who Planted Trees. Bouffier, wandering alone around the denuded foothills of the Provencal Alps, planted acorns wherever he went, creating over the years a forest full of birds and wildlife. The French authorities, baffled by its appearance described it as “miraculous” and refused to believe a lone committed man could be responsible for its creation.
I ask Kaj to explain how best to plant acorns in order that other people may copy his example and contribute to the greening of Spain.
He explains how you harvest the acorns in October or November, collecting only the good ones that have fallen to the ground as these are the mature ones. Find a good spot to plant them; preferably sheltered from harsh winds and perhaps in the shade of a small bush to stop the emergent sapling dying during its first summer.
Then, when the first substantial rains have fallen, dig a hole 20cm (8 inches) deep and put a bit of compost in, mixed with soil. Then put about eight acorns in – sometimes only one will grow and other times all eight will. Fill the hole in and wait. The acorns will put down tap roots up to a metre long before sprouting upwards the following spring. Don’t plant them any closer than 10 metres (30 feet) apart because eventually they will have huge root systems. If you can, try to protect them for the first summer, and make sure goats or sheep can’t get at them.
As if to illustrate the point I notice a nearby sheep gazing wistfully at the tiny saplings from behind a wire fence.
Overgrazing, says Kaj, is why the trees are unable to reproduce without a little human help. He has asked the local goatherds to keep their animals off his land for a couple of years to give his trees a chance – something that they are happy to do. Instead he clears the land by hand with a pair of shears and a handsaw; a Herculean task for anyone, let alone someone who, like Kaj, is recovering from an operation for cancer. “It keeps me pretty fit,” he says.
A three hour drive away, in the beautiful valleys of Las Alpujarras, south of Granada, another foreigner is literally putting down roots. David Tonge, a translator from England, lives next to a dusty river called the Rio Seco, just outside Órgiva. When he bought his house two years ago the river was a grubby wasteland of garbage bags, dumped fridges and tons of building rubble. David swung into action, hassling the local mayor to the point where he agreed to provide refuse trucks and skips to contain the waste.
But the task proved too big for just one man so David enlisted the help of local volunteers to scour a two kilometre stretch of river and remove as much waste as possible. I joined the volunteers one Sunday morning while they were heaving out rotting refuse – including old television sets and a microwave oven – from the river. Cleaning the river was one thing, but nothing was growing along its banks, save for the poisonous and beautiful oleander. What the river needed was trees.
“One day a group of foreigners appeared on the river bank carrying spades and saplings and practicing tai chi movements as they worked,” David recalls.
These meditating arborealists were, in fact, holidaymakers from the local alternative holiday centre Cortijo Romero (www.cortijo-romero.co.uk). Now the banks have been planted up with saplings and one Andalucian river is coming back to life. The trees will help maintain the water cycle, shading the river to prevent evaporation and releasing cooling moisture during the hot summer months.
Mario Robles del Moral, a 37 year old nurse from Malaga, is another individual working hard to green Andalucía. Concerned by statistics stating that 44 per cent of Spain now suffers from chronic soil erosion and that 2,000 square kilometres have turned to desert in the last 15 years alone, Mario founded the Ecological Research Institute in Malaga (www.iniec.com).
Since its inception, Mario has networked with local mayors, forestry officials and leaders of environmental organisations to initiate the Bosques de España (Forests of Spain) campaign, which has so far planted some 110,000 trees. Mario now plans to take the scheme nationwide and is looking for volunteers to become local ‘forest rangers’.
But it is not just in the south of Spain where reforestation efforts are underway. In the damp north a project is underway to preserve some of Galicia’s remaining forests. As reported in the Olive Press last year, conservation is the keyword here and native Galician Pablo Oitabén has founded a project whereby ‘green speculators’ can buy up threatened land cheaply in order that it is protected from development.
So far some 3,000 hectares have been added by around 1,000 international ‘investors’ and the forest is a haven for all forms of wildlife from wolves to butterflies. Oitabén has garnered a kind of green celebrity status for his efforts and featured in a documentary about the wolves he protects. (For more information see www.asociacion-ridimoas.org)
So the next time someone tells you about how inevitable it is that Spain will become an annexe to the Sahara, spare a thought for the quiet legions of tree planters out there, working diligently and without pay, in order to try and make the country a little greener.
The benefits of tree planting
Trees absorb CO2 as they grow, combating global warming
They provide habitat for birds and insects
They prevent soil erosion and hold moisture in the land
They create natural beauty and shade
