The fire declared on Tuesday night in the Altos de Arafo and which has already spread to the northern slope of the Island is destroying some of the most important and best preserved forests in the Archipelago. These are the pine forests of the Forest Crown of Tenerifethe largest protected space in Canary Islands.
The Forest Crown is a green belt of natural protection of the Teide National Park which extends for 46,613 hectares. These mountains in which pine forests and mountain vegetation predominate They cover 17 of the 31 municipalities of Tenerife: La Orotava, Adeje, Los Realejos, Vilaflor, El Tanque, Santiago del Teide, Candelaria, Icod de los Vinos, La Guancha, San Juan de Rambla, Güímar, Arico, Arafo, Guide from Isora, Granadilla, Fasnia and Garachico.
Some of the most important popularizers on the Island already describe the Corona Forestal fire as “a great natural catastrophe.” This is the case, for example, of Jaime Coello, Master’s in Environmental Policy and Management, naturalist, environmental disseminator and scientist and director of the Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello Canary Foundation. “The flames are destroying places of great biological interest, some of the best-preserved forests on the Islands,” he says.
Coello lists the main reasons why he considers the Corona Forestal a space “decisive for the nature of Tenerife”. «It forms a protective ring of the Teide National Park, it has a multitude of ecosystems connected to each other of great biological wealth, it is vital for water collection and is the habitat of a multitude of species, some endemic to Tenerife or the Canary Islands such as the pine itself. canary, the blue chaffinch or the woodpeckers.
Jaime Coello recalls that there are many other species of great value in the Forest Crown, such as invertebrates, the species of the so-called microbiota (communities of microorganisms) or bats and lizards, seriously threatened by the great forest fire that affects the Island.
Juanjo Ramos, a specialist in environmental communication and biodiversity conservation, as well as a nature photographer and bird expert, goes further and points out that “some of the most important forests in the Canary Islands” are being burned. “Probably the current generations are the ones that have received the best pine forests in history thanks to the conservation and repopulation policies that have given such good results,” he underlines.
Ramos is especially concerned about bird species, which “find in the Corona Forestal a wide and ideal space for development.” He specifically cites the blue chaffinch, a bird that only exists on Tenerife, as well as great spotted woodpeckers, robins, tits and warblers. “They must be suffering a lot because these species have their ideal habitat in some of the forests that are burning.” “The fire is affecting some of the ornithological jewels of the Islands,” emphasizes the naturalist, who has followed Moroccowhere he is developing a project, the evolution of the flames with “enormous concern”.
Jaime Coello remembers another important fact about this fauna of the Forest Crown: «The blue finches and the woodpeckers are now precisely in the breeding season. The flames must be causing them enormous damage, we still don’t know if it’s irreparable.”
an emblematic species
The blue chaffinch, an emblem of Tenerife’s fauna, lives exclusively in Tenerife’s pine forests. In general, they live at an altitude of 1,000 to 2,000 meters, although they can sometimes be seen at lower levels. Within the pine forest, they choose the area with the greatest number of mature pines.
Corners with incredible landscapes of the island’s mountains have also been devastated by the flames. This is the case of the Chipeque viewpoint, one of the most visited in Tenerife and with a privileged panoramic view of the Teide National Park and the northern slope of the Island Several videos with the flames devouring the vegetation of this iconic point caused a sad reaction on social networks.
