The Municipality of El Tanque has just started the administrative procedures to put up for public auction the forest exploitation of 40,000 kilos of Canarian pine needles that accumulates in the public forest of the municipality. the mayor, Esther Morales (PSOE), details that “in the coming days, interested companies will be able to resort to the State Contracting Platform to analyze and present the corresponding offers, in order to reduce the mass of possible forest fuel and guarantee the cleanliness of the public forest, especially in the areas closest to the population centers of the locality, where we also help reduce the risk of fires».
In the document approved by the tank town hall It is established that these 40 tons of pine needles must come from an area of 241.35 hectares, proposed by the Technical Service for Planning and Forestry Projects of the Cabildo de Tenerife. And in addition, they will be awarded unitarily, and not by lots, “for operational reasons” and to avoid “a plurality of contractors”.
The form of adjudication of the forest use will be the public auction, in which any interested party may submit an offer. For the evaluation of the proposals and the determination of the best offer, a single award criterion will be used: the best price. The one who pays the most for those 40,000 kilos of pinocha will win. The starting price is just 120 euros and the winner will be able to work in the mountains until December 31, 2022.
The starting price of the auction is just 120 euros
The professional pinocheros who participate in these auctions bid for lots like the one now offered by the El Tanque City Council. His objective is to acquire the pine needles for later sale, an increasingly complicated and scarce business. The Annual Plan for Forest Exploitation in Public Forests, which is drawn up and approved by the Cabildo, establishes the places, quantities, cost and rules to be followed in the collection of this forest material.
The regulation of the harvest of pine needles, at the end of the 90s of the 20th century, was developed with the intention of avoiding abuses and preserving the ecosystem of the pine forest, since the dry needles of the Canarian pines serve as food and shelter for some animals, prevent soil erosion and they collaborate in the maintenance of the humidity and the fertility of the soil. Formerly, Canarian farmers and ranchers freely collected the pine needles from the mountains for very diverse uses, such as the production of fertilizer, food and animal litter.
