NO LONGER are the fires the main headlines in the Greek press, politics move on. But, nevertheless, much of the country remains affected and disaffected by the decisions being reached as the flames die down. In Zaharo, one of the most devastated small towns, the local Mayor has supposedly signed a deal to develop the fire ravaged coastline for tourism. Some locals will be supporting him. How tempting it must be to look at your scorched olives and vineyards and be seduced to sell, your few acres worth more cleared and ready for the bulldozers than as hard graft agricultural land.
Elsewhere, villages are being rebuilt with donations from government and charities, and ecologists tell us that much of the land will recover. Tough old olive trees, although charred, will fruit in time, vines will sprout and, as long as soil erosion is limited, fire tolerant plants, once watered by winter rains, will spring back to life. Some indigenous firs, it seems, thrive on being burnt, it is essential for their regeneration.
As part of a reforestation project, I’ve been invited to go and collect seeds from woods and roll them in little balls of soil and clay to be dropped in their thousands from a plane or distributed by hand. Play Doh planting, developed by the Japanese, Manasobu Fukuoka. It’s patently fun to do, but nothing is that simple. Foresters, farmers, environmentalists all have different views on the best way forward. The cleared land, now seen as prime grazing by local farmers, should be protected, argue the ecologists, as delicate indigenous plants are given a chance to reseed and establish without having their buds eaten by greedy goats. The replanting programme should be left to nature, to take its course, argue some foresters, so that the hardiest fire resistant species establish themselves: a Darwinism of natural selection. We should intervene, argue others, and take this opportunity to replant with managed, sustainable forests.
The curious paradox is that manmade wildernesses can later become romanticised. I remember once living on the edge of Dartmoor, that huge emptiness in the south west of England, barren and bleak. Poets like Ted Hughes, writers like the Brontes had immortalised the majesty of moorlands as part of our heritage. Yet they were created deserts, just as disastrous in their way as the burnt landscape of Greece. Once thickly wooded, logged to death to feed the Tudor shipbuilding industry, overgrazed by sheep, they were denuded to the bone to create the landscape of today. But now, these peat and bog empty spaces are protected, glorified as unique ecosystems. Which is why management of the countryside is so complicated, why there is no simple solution but many, why very few landscapes are “natural”.
What, of course, will not regenerate are those villages where lives have been lost, where families have been wiped out and a lifetime’s worth of memories lies in cinders. Where a neighbour you have known all your life awaits trial for arson, or having gone, leaves land to overgrow until someone in a sharp suit arrives to tell you what should grow from the ash or digging deep in a pocket offers cash. Meanwhile, I’ll get back to making little balls…
