My volunteer trip to help revive a fire-ravaged Portuguese forest
The gently sloping valley floor below the village of Ferraria de São João is so green and lush that you might imagine insects must line up to take their turn in its Arcadian abundance . The birds are singing, the bees are buzzing and the meadow grasses are pushing towards an azure sky.
It wasn't always like this. Antonio Zuzarte remembers how, five years ago, a violent forest fire reduced the landscape to a scorched and blackened wasteland. Everything was reduced to ashes, he said - the trees, the crops, the animal life.
"For weeks an acrid stench hung in the air", explains Zuzarte, a telecommunications engineer. "And the silence too: it must have been at least a year before the birds returned to the village."
Up to his ankles in the water, he drives a shovel into a bank of silty mud as he talks. Along with a dozen villagers, Zuzarte is part of a conservation volunteer group in Ferraria.
Encouraged by the ecological devastation caused by the fire, the group comes together every couple of months to plant new trees, keep the ground free of fallen branches, and generally help return their valley to its former verdant state.
Today it's is the day of cleaning the ditches. An old irrigation canal and holding tank are clogged with weeds and sediment, and members of the Aldeia Viva (living village) have set aside a Sunday morning to clean it up.
An empty wheelbarrow rests at the edge of the foot-deep stream, its cargo of sharp hoes and spiked reed pullers distributed among the volunteers.
I'm here to lend a hand. Forest fires are, unfortunately, a predictable phenomenon here in Portugal. For a few months each summer, the television news fills with images of burning trees, and the nation cries and protests. But then time turns and it's forgotten for another year.
Last summer, however, hit a whole new level. With fires raging from Spain and France to Italy and Romania, it looked like half of Europe was going up in smoke. It was no longer fair to moan from the sofa: I had to do my part.
The gently sloping valley floor below the village of Ferraria de São João is so green and lush that you might imagine insects must line up to take their turn in its Arcadian abundance . The birds are singing, the bees are buzzing and the meadow grasses are pushing towards an azure sky.
It wasn't always like this. Antonio Zuzarte remembers how, five years ago, a violent forest fire reduced the landscape to a scorched and blackened wasteland. Everything was reduced to ashes, he said - the trees, the crops, the animal life.
"For weeks an acrid stench hung in the air", explains Zuzarte, a telecommunications engineer. "And the silence too: it must have been at least a year before the birds returned to the village."
Up to his ankles in the water, he drives a shovel into a bank of silty mud as he talks. Along with a dozen villagers, Zuzarte is part of a conservation volunteer group in Ferraria.
Encouraged by the ecological devastation caused by the fire, the group comes together every couple of months to plant new trees, keep the ground free of fallen branches, and generally help return their valley to its former verdant state.
Today it's is the day of cleaning the ditches. An old irrigation canal and holding tank are clogged with weeds and sediment, and members of the Aldeia Viva (living village) have set aside a Sunday morning to clean it up.
An empty wheelbarrow rests at the edge of the foot-deep stream, its cargo of sharp hoes and spiked reed pullers distributed among the volunteers.
I'm here to lend a hand. Forest fires are, unfortunately, a predictable phenomenon here in Portugal. For a few months each summer, the television news fills with images of burning trees, and the nation cries and protests. But then time turns and it's forgotten for another year.
Last summer, however, hit a whole new level. With fires raging from Spain and France to Italy and Romania, it looked like half of Europe was going up in smoke. It was no longer fair to moan from the sofa: I had to do my part.
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