ProPopulus Team
The General Directorate of Natural Environment, Biodiversity and Protected Areas of the Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development Department of the Andalusian Government (Dirección General de Medio Ambiente Natural, Biodiversidad y Espacios Protegidos de la Consejería de Agricultura, Ganadería Pesca y Desarrollo Sostenible de la Junta de Andalucía), has assigned a batch of public bidding projects for forests amounting to 60 million euros. The Andalusian Department of Agriculture has been working on the reactivation of the forestry sector, to tackle the need to generate employment whilst preserving production activities in rural areas.
This plan falls within the framework of the natural environment recovery program that the Regional Government considers a core strategy for the economic, social and environmental recovery of the region.
For the Andalusian Regional Government, the revaluation of forests through the promotion of sustainable rural development and the rational use of resources is a priority. In addition to contributing to creating employmentitalso, improves the conditions of rural areas by avoiding further depopulation.
The public bidding program for forests includes immediate actions, as well as for the short, medium and long term. For imminent actions, which will be carried out over the region’s eight provinces, about 12 million euros have been allocated to silvicultural treatments, protection and restoration actions in natural areas and public forests; reinforcement actions and promotion of biodiversity and improvement of forest ecosystems.
In the short term, three major projects totalling around 17 million euros are planned under the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. Actions include prevention and intervention projects in areas of forest mass decline as well as the restoration of forests in the western sector of the Doñana Natural Park, affected by the Las Peñuelas fire in 2017. The latter will have a budget of three million euros. For the medium term, forestry prevention interventions have been defined for forests throughout the region.