On 9 June, the Deputy General of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, Markel Olano, and the Deputy for Economic Promotion, Tourism and the Rural Environment, Jabier Larrañaga, appeared in Donostia to present the Basotik Foundation. The director general of Montes y Medio Natural, Arantxa Ariztimuño, appeared to be present, although he did not take the floor.

The Foundation was born with a participation of 100% of the Member, with a budget of EUR 2 million. It says that the Council has taken the social partners into account for this initiative, because we are not on its agenda landowners and businesses, environmentalists and nature conservationists.

As stated at the hearing: “The Foundation will be responsible for the integrated management of forests: planting, cleaning, processing, commercialization of wood and products.” It is clear that these are not forests, but plantations of trees. In the words of Jabier Larrañaga, “the number of abandoned or unmanaged forests is currently 16% and they intend to curb this reality”, that is, to turn the forests that are being naturalized into timber plantations.

The Foundation was born with the intention of managing the forest lands of the private owners. At present, there are 95,000 ha in their hands, reaching almost 10,000 farms. The disaster that lives in the primary sector, only 20% of the owners are under 50 years of age, is an unchanged sector, which is allowing the death of the administration for the benefit of a few. And it is clear that the new recipe is to leave the management of this property in public hands (i.e. in companies).

This is the first question raised by the question: Does the peasant unions see it with good eyes? Is the aim of landholders, farmers, pastors and landowners today to become servants and subsidiaries of the administration?

The second question is no less important. In the knowledge that forestry policy is conditional on the Council in the form of subsidies, is it possible that the administration distributing the money is the manager of the beneficiaries? In the free market economic model, is it not against free competition?

General Member Markel Olano made a political assessment to justify the initiative. As the Member has become customary, from start to finish, she showed her willingness to confuse the citizens with an interested and erroneous use of the dictionary. He said that in Gipuzkoa the forest area is 61 per cent, when he knows that most of that area (if sick) is composed of tree plantations. He said that forests are important “from the environmental point of view, from the point of view of biodiversity, from the point of view of the landscape and the primary sector, from the point of view of the peasant economy”, and that they are “a good tool to absorb CO2 in the fight against climate change”. Forests, yes, not tree plantations: when intensive management is carried out based on monoculture like ours, all these benefits become environmental impacts, as demonstrated by the biodiversity reports shown by the government and the indicators of land losses measured by the Ministry of Spain.

According to Larrañaga, the Basotik Foundation will now facilitate difficult management for forest owners (needs skin for the complex processing to take advantage of this difficulty for its own benefit! ). ). Given the small area of the majority of owners, the Provincial Council will manage the areas in a concentrated way, which would result in a higher return on the part of the collective management. Industrialization of farms, both with milk and meat, now with wood. The recovery of forests does not require this.

The Member says that she wants to make a qualitative leap with the Basotik foundation, and she has done so, but not on the road to a sustainable forest, as Olano said. The Foundation represents a qualitative leap against the conservation of nature and biodiversity, one more step towards ruin.

* In Naturko is made up of natural and ecological groups of Gipuzkoa