The extinction of the Forestry Services was the most blatant affront perpetrated against the good management of Portuguese territory and represents the most brazen neoliberal-inspired action we have ever seen.
The Forestry Services covered the territory, with a network of guard houses included in Administrations and these, in turn, belonging to Forestry Circumscriptions, which were regional.
I was a Forest Administrator and got to know the Services that came from the time of the Monarchy,
In the good times of their operation, they had other services linked to the forest: there were torrent correction services, inland fish farming services and a hunting restocking service.
Who is making torrential corrections today?
However, with the mountains stripped of the burning forest, thousands and thousands of hectares with steep slopes are left unprotected – torrents of mud and stones flow freely to clog waterways. Does anyone care about this?
And we had an internationally renowned technician, Engº Mário Galo, who invented a dam to be built with concrete plates, very ingenious and easy to assemble, which ensured the systematization of the water lines. I put some together myself – is there anyone today who knows how to do them?
They must think that these are unnecessary expenses, the smaller State becomes a better State…
The extinction of the Forestry Service was forced by the influence of the cellulose industry; There was a certain time when the entire organization – Minister, Secretary of State and General Director – were all cellulose employees.
But even so, the ethics of forestry engineers required forestry planning that naturally limited industrial forests only to areas where they were suitable for soil and climate conditions. They were, therefore, a target to be shot down.
It was the “glorious time” in which the Rural Extension Services were abolished. It was too much of a State… the big agrarians have their own technicians.
On the other hand, the large Protected Areas (Natural Parks and Nature Reserves), with their planning plans, were another obstacle to the free planting of eucalyptus…
As 95% of the Portuguese forest area (woods and forests) is private property, the bright idea arose that it was not the State's responsibility to deal with it; blunder, as forest resources are national resources and their management must be up to the Rule of Social Law.
But the liberal norm of less State for better State worked; During the government of Durão Barroso, there was a conspiracy of two Secretaries of State to combine the protected areas with the forestry areas in the same organization, which was denounced by the then Minister of the Environment, Eng. Amílcar Teias. It failed at that time, but it came to fruition later…
It was with António Costa as Minister of Internal Administration that the forest guards were removed from the Forestry Services and placed in the GNR.
For this he had the support (and perhaps the idea) of the then minister of agriculture, whose name I won't even mention, who came from Brussels full of “science” and ruined the Ministry, having been the worst minister of Agriculture ever (even counting on the previous minister…).
Then, with Assunção Cristas, the process continued and she can be proud of having been the one with whom the Pinhal de Leiria burned down.
The ICNF is such an abortion that neither does Nature Conservation correctly nor manages the forests, because it does not have a structure in place on the ground to do what the Forestry Services would do.
And what else was there to say…
Author: Fernando Santos Pessoa is a landscape architect and forestry engineer… and writes with the spelling he learned at school
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