November 23rd is celebrated in Portugal as Native Forest Day.
A day that serves, essentially, to raise awareness of the importance of preserving and caring for our forest.
Year after year, and due to various factors, including constant forest fires, poor forest management, and the focus on monocultures, we have witnessed the decline of our native species.
Fortunately, more and more people are becoming aware of this natural loss and are trying, together, to counteract this decline. Those who live in the areas most affected by wildfires know that the species that often slow down or prevent the fire from advancing are the native species of that region. These are also the species that later, even after being devastated, return to life. This is the case with cork oaks and holm oaks.
If we had a conscious plan to combat wildfires at the national level, we would create firebreaks with native species and not just gaps without vegetation in the mountains, as we see here.
There are many species that are at severe risk of extinction. But there is still hope of recovering them, such as the Scots Pine (Pinus Sylvestris), Dwarf Willow (Salix Repens), Yew (Taxus Baccata), among others... It is up to us, as a conscious population, to try to stop this decline. We only stand to gain from it. Together we are stronger.
For a better world. For a greener world.
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