- Many villages and valleys are generating movements for their forests, most of which have been grouped into the Living Forests platform. As part of this rebirth, a group of people already working in the Jaizkibel area joined last year to form the Amezti group. “Some people who have been working for years on the recovery of the forest here, and just last year, meeting younger and enthusiastic people, encouraged by the movement for living forests, we created a group,” the project explains. At the moment there are people from Lezo in the group, but their intention is to promote a project for the whole of Mount Jaizkibel. A week of living forests was organised at the end of January.
In the area of Jaizkibel once dominated the marojal, but today there is little left of that previous forest. “There are only a few rows of marojals left, there is some corner towards Hondarribia, but it is very scarce,” they say. Robledal is also scarce, especially on private grounds and in the form of small unrelated spots. In Jaizkibel, maritime pine predominates, along with the insignis pine that has been lost in recent years. “There are hardly any native forests, but at the same time it is clear that in the area where we have been working in recent years the forest is in a different situation,” they say.
In fact, the Iparraguirre area has been cultivating indigenous species for years and contributing to the natural recovery of the forest. “There were oak trees, strawberries, birches and seed plants, and we have also introduced motherhood. It’s still a young forest, but you already see the wealth that you don’t see on other plots,” they say. It is part of a plot of 22 hectares of the rich Satrustegi family, adjacent to the town, which has been recovering in recent years. “The pedestrian paths to Jaizkibel take this direction, and it is a forest that we citizens have always used. Use it, not exploit it,” they stress.
Request for expropriation
In January, Amezti and Etxetxo, group of the Historical Memory of Lezo, requested the city council to expropriate 22 hectares of land from the Satrustegui. “In addition to the importance of the forest, in this area there are walls built by the prisoners who built the road after the war, and we have also carried out neighboring works to recover that memory,” they say. Moreover, the people of Lezo have historically drunk the river through the lower part of the land, and the groups also claim the hydrographic interest of the area.
“In any case, we ask that if the City Hall or another institution got that plot, we can take it, because we are seeing that in other places there are also huge nonsense in land of public property,” they say. The request has not been answered so far. Meanwhile, the groups are not standing, they intend to continue with the auzolans and they intend to launch a small-scale marojo nursery, as they have difficulty in getting this plant. “It can be found elsewhere, but it needs an adapted plant here.”