The world has lost in 2019 a piece of primary forest as large as the surface of Belgium,” the agencies have released. The jungles of the tropics worry the planet, because with their destruction we lose the biodiversity needed for the big lungs, the rain and the human survival that can swallow CO2. A total of 12 million hectares of lost forests – 3.6 million hectares – have been lost in the destruction of primary forests, half in Brazil and Indonesia and the rest in Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Congo.

For this reason, and because in these cases the Western press only refers to threatened trees and animals from the tropics, the following wording has been drawn to attention: “We will create a primary forest in Europe and it will be a work of 600 years.” Francis Hallé, a brave militant in favour of botanists and trees, has launched a campaign in Europe to organise a 70,000 hectare wild forest.

“The primary forest,” says our Wikipedia, also called virgin forest, is a forest that man has never exploded or cut.” Currently, 0.7 per cent of Europe's land area consists of old primary forests, according to various studies. The only large primary forest in Europe is Bialowiez, which occupies 142,000 hectares between Poland and Belarus, one ¾ of the area of Gipuzkoa. In the Karpato mountains there is another forest of almost 30,000 hectares, also threatened. In addition, the last remnants of old forests, including Aztaparreta, are dispersed in the Navarre Pyrenees.

The teaching of “environment” in European schools should be aimed at children and young people both on those in Europe and on the forests of the Congo, the Amazon or the Borneo and show chronological maps that reflect the great devastation of our rich continent, presented in 2009 in the study The prehistoric and preindustrial deforestation of Europe. Oh, Europe, what you are and where you are!

“8,000 years ago a squirrel could go from Lisbon to Moscow without touching land,” the experts say. Much later it was already the same, before the arrival of the Romans the Iberian Peninsula appears green on the map, with the green that Germany has today. Agriculture and ploughing came for the first time, then the demolition of forests for war, construction and industry, industrial agriculture recently… It has come to be forgotten that Europe has been, not so long ago, a land of deep forests and gigantic trees, including the lands on the shores of the Mediterranean that are now on their way to becoming deserts. According to the famous French biologist Francis Hallé, the United States, Russia, China, Argentina, Chile… they still have some old forests, although cut off; we Europeans have destroyed them all, also losing the memory of what we were and what we can still be.

He has carried out his main research in tropical rainforests, which is due to much of his knowledge of ecology and animals about gigantic trees. But in old age it has focused on defending the trees and forests of Europe, because the people of the tropics cannot be asked to get involved in the wild if we Europeans do not do our part by recovering what has been lost in the last 30 centuries.

Revitalizing biodiversity

The author of the book Plaidoyer pour l’arbre (“In defense of the tree”) continues to work, publish and learn with his 82 years in a campaign to create a 70,000 hectare primary forest. Zuberoa has 80,000 hectares, while Goierri and Tolosaldea add 75,000. In this jungle the human being will do nothing if he is not visiting in an orderly way and with a didactic objective; otherwise, leaving nature in peace in its wild, that trees, plants, animals, fungi develop themselves… Do not sow, do not plant, “nature knows very well to do its work, the seeds know very well to travel… but leave the time” says Hallé. Time? If you choose deforested areas to rebuild the forest, it will take 1,000 years; if you start with existing forests, four or six centuries. I work between many generations. “I don’t know what the Earth will look like in six centuries, we have reason to be concerned. But what can we do better than do something that's the opposite of what we're doing now? It’s in our hands.”

The association of Hallé neighbours has been established in the forests surrounding the borders between France, Switzerland and Germany so that the project starts from today’s oldest sketches. The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Ley, has been intending to place the intention in the new European Green Treaty. It has also addressed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to seek to launch the New Forest New Deal on a global scale and to designate trees as “human commons”.

That the trees grow to the maximum size until the black forest is formed, and that the animals that existed before they were destroyed in Europe are gradually multiplied: wolves, visons, bears, uros... “And yet ... 70,000 is not enough. It’s a step in the right direction, of course, but like a drop of water.”

In addition to the idea of the old teacher, agronomist and scientist Hervé Coves, who in recent years has become one of the references of Francophone agroecology, has proposed in the programme Manifesta pour une agriculture de l’amour (Manifesta por una agricultura de amor) concrete steps for the reintroduction of trees and biodiversity in European fields. Hallé promotes as a symbol a great project, steps that any citizen can start from a young age. Step-by-step The earth recovers rain, biodiversity and prosperity.

Reconciling production and the tree of food, the peasants – also those on the street! – and wildlife. Recover the hedges surrounding the fields to protect living beings from all birds and classes. There are 40 trees planted per hectare, counting large, small and scrumptious trees, which a human being can slowly achieve. Leave at least one tree of 100 hectares per square kilometer forever. From time to time, some forests are specially protected as a shrine to biodiversity...Excellent program for turbulent times.