The “Riverside Forests” Project. A recovery plan for the elm tree plantations in the Balearic Islands

The project

The regeneration and conservation of the Balearic water network riverside forests, particularly their elm tree plantations, is vital to maintain a significant proportion of the aquifer recharge potential of much of the insular hydrological basins, limiting the erosive processes, flooding abatement, conserving soils and slowing down surface runoff.

Apart from the direct water protection and management benefits, this project also has an enormous environmental importance, and a great scope in terms of improving landscape quality and tourism resources.

This project would entail improved and specialised employment in the forestry area, all the more necessary to fight unemployment in rural parts of the islands, promoting innovative reforestation activity during the winter months.

The proposed riverbank forest recovery project is therefore based on the following actions:

1. The selection and preparation of a riverside tree species indigenous plant in the Menut forest nursery.

2. The establishment of protections or closures in the elm tree plantation and other riverside species reovery areas within the spaces protected by the Natura 2000 Network.

3. Plantation of the new elm tree plantations resistant to Dutch elm disease, along with other species of hardwoods typical of insular riverside forests.

4. The monitoring of the growth and consolidation of recovered forests.

Apart from the ecological value involved in the recovery of the biodiversity provided by these local hardwood forests present in the riverside strips of the mountain regions of Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza, they are also a valuable contribution to the improvement of the landscape quality in the most valued natural spaces of these islands and their exceptional beauty in extraordinarily popular tourist areas.