Mourèze: a cut to fight against the invasion of Aleppo pines

The ONF teams are hard at work until Monday… JM – JM

Le site doit conserver sa typicité géologique. JM – JM

The construction site is underway in the Cirque de Mourèze. JM – JM

In Mourèze, an Aleppo pine cutting program has been launched for three years to prevent the remarkable landscape from becoming commonplace. The work, launched this Monday, will have to stop on January 15, the start of the nesting period for Bonelli's eagle. The construction site will resume, intermittently, in a few months… 26 hectares are affected.

Old views of the dolomitic landscape of Mourèze bear witness to a lunar aspect which tends to fade little by little over time. As surely as the pastoral presence slowly diminished to nothing, until it disappeared, the conifers, notably the Aleppo pine, proliferated on the site. So much so that today it is a question of restoring the geological typicality of the cirque where the Pinus Halepensis takes its ease. 

A dotted cut…

A cutting of this invasive species is therefore launched, for three years, "intermittently", specifies Patrick Jaurès, mayor of the town. Because if the ONF teams have been hard at work since Monday, to allow the places to assert the mineral madness which attracts, each year, more than 100,000 visitors , the Bonneli eagle, whose nesting is imminent, imposes its tempo. As a result, from January 15, the purring of chainsaws will have to give way to the nuptial display of birds of prey. A truce of a few months before the construction site, financed by the Com du Clermontais, resumes its rights.

Keep the middle open

In the meantime, the project is progressing well, on the first three hectares out of the 26 planned, in the long term, to allow "the site to retain its mineral appearance", underlines the chief magistrate of Mourèze. At the head of a dozen men, Pierre Tortajada, works manager at the ONF, leads the cut. "We are mainly removing Aleppo pine which is invasive, and a few maritime pines. We see that in the areas on which we worked in 2015, releases tend to occur. to share out. It is useful to remove these trees to limit their visual impact and reduce the fire risk."  Besides the visual aspect, " the invasion by the Aleppo pine also weighs on biodiversity. The richness of the ecosystem that exists in an open environment is compromised by the colonization of pines, analyzes Patrick Jaurès. "We preserve as much as possible the holm oaks, the Scots pine and a few Aleppo pine trees along the paths, to shade them", explains Pierre Tortajada. 

Difficult access to the site means that the ONF teams went there on foot and, this Tuesday, took advantage of ;a relative lull in Tramontane to burn the coniferous branches on site. Through the white smoke, the landscape of the dolomites then took on the appearance of a western…

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