- With the arrival of the winter atmosphere, in many houses the fires are already on. But do we know where and how the wood is pulled out to feed the fire? In the Hergarai Valley in Baja Navarra, there is a cooperative of wood extraction through the sustainable exploitation of forests: Sugarai. “The adventure started in 2009; a group of people gathered at the open gates of the valley to address the issues of forest and wood,” explains Manager Peio Harlouchet. After five years of consolidation, the Sugarai cooperative, with 104 members, was established in 2015.
The cooperative was born with four axes or objectives: to re-interest the forestry sector and manage it sustainably together with the forest owners; to reactivate the timber economy in a short circuit; to create employment in the valley and to give a source of income beyond the vegetable gardens to the farmers who were also forest owners. “The first thing we started was the exploitation of wood to heat it up, but at first we had to work a lot with other companies,” says Harlouchet. At present, however, the whole process is carried out by the cooperative itself and has two full-time jobs. They sell the broken and crushed wood.
But what does the cooperative do to make exploitation more sustainable? “We always enter the forests after making a diagnosis and use the material proper to our environment so as not to damage the areas and the slopes.” They take into account both forestry work equipment and atmospheric time, limiting their area to a maximum of 30 kilometres of the residence. They are also working in more complicated mountain areas of accessibility, offering owners the possibility of exploiting these forests that had somehow been “abandoned”.
Reafforestation
For two years now, another axis of the cooperative has been reforestation. They have obtained low-carbon certification and thus are funded for the cultivation of companies interested in compensating for carbon emissions. “We planted everything, mixing species, to ensure the hardness and strength of the forest: beech, motherhood, oak, chestnut, ash, white, spruce, pine…”.
They also have projects for the near future. Specifically, it is planned to launch a sawmill in the spring of 2022. “With the idea of enhancing the value of wood, it is also intended to be used for other things: railroad wedges, badges, planks…”. As for the sale, they have a limit of 30 kilometers, as the philosophy of the short circuit is very important for them. “Our goal is not to become a multinational, but to create cooperatives like ours everywhere, in all the valleys. We have to develop tools with a structure and a close character.”