From: tgray@IGC.APC.ORG (Tom Gray)
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Subject: IPS: Reforestation from Bulgaria
Date: 18 Nov 92 17:28:08 GMT
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/* Written 12:04 am  Nov  7, 1992 by newsdesk@igc.apc.org in igc:ips.englibrary
*/
Copyright Inter Press Service 1992, all rights reserved.  Permission to re-
print within 7 days of original date only with permission from 'newsdesk'.

Area: Africa, west
Title: ENVIRONMENT: Bulgarian know-how sprouts green in Wales/SERIES/


an inter-press service feature

by moyra ashford

att editors: the following is the second in a four part series of
features on forests across the world looking at their economic and
environmental importance to the developed and developing world.
the first was moved from london earlier wednesday, while the other
two will be transmitted on thursday.

london, nov 04 (ips) -- blaenavon in south wales must be one of
the most desolate landscapes in the world. what was once a
thriving open cast coalmining area is now a windswept, grey-black
lunar desert, dotted with sparse and patchy grassland.

it is here, in one of britain's most depressed areas, that a
reclamation experiment inspired by the himalayas and executed by
bulgarian foresters is using trees to achieve what bulldozers and
expensive inputs of top-soil have failed.

''we are trying to create a change in thinking -- that
reclamation should start from the perspective of ecology rather
than engineering'', said project leader martin haigh.

a specialist in soil erosion at oxford polytechnic, haigh was
born just down the valley from blaenavon and has been studying the
region for 21 years -- the world's longest-running soil erosion
study on surface coal mining.

haigh believes that shale tips are still unreclaimed 40 years
after closure because the wrong methods have been employed. the
standard approach is to fill up the craters, tipping back all the
shale and trimmings that were taken out, and then spread a layer
of top-soil over the top.

''it is literally like putting a carpet over dead land'', said
haigh, ''eventually, it wears out''. unlike many similar badlands,
the problem is not toxicity, but the fact that the top soil
gradually becomes so compacted that nothing will grow.

when the pits are refilled, rocks which have previously been
underground are left on the surface. not having been exposed to
the elements before, they break up -- rocks crumble and fall
apart.

at the same time, the fine clay particles in the top soil get
washed down, filling the holes in the crumbling rocks. after a
while nothing can get in -- neither air nor the root hairs of
incipient vegetation. ''you get a situation where ecology is
regressing'', said haigh.(more/ips)

environment: bulgarian know-how sprouts green in wales/series/(2-e)

environment: green (2)

in 1978, haigh went on a u.s. scholarship to the dehyradun
region of the himalayas. ''the scale of erosion there dwarfed
everything i have ever seen'', he said, ''huge boulders just
showered down the deforested slopes''.

the idea of team leader s.b. bartarya was to create 'spring
sanctuaries', leaving the top of hills forested in order to keep
soil in place, store water and keeping springs running.

it was the himalayan experience, together with the example of
the chipco activists in india who embraced trees to save them from
loggers, that convinced haigh he would have to do more than study
the blaenavon region -- he would have to do something about it.

''there i was'', he said, ''a so-called  foreign expert, brought
in to advise, yet i was learning from them and back home serious
problems were going unresolved.''

the last piece in the equation turned up in 1987 during a
british council-sponsored visit to examine bulgarian land
restoration projects.

at pernik, a run-down mining region in western bulgaria, haigh
found what he had been looking for: ''a group which had been
working very quietly for years -- because bulgaria never had money
for topsoil, the problem had been handed over to the foresters.''

after 15 years of intense tree planting, they had achieved
''some good healthy land reclamation''. one species in particular,
the false acacia, or robinia pseudoacacia, had proved extremely
successful at regenerating soil life.

but back in england, haigh's proposal to adapt bulgarian
methods to wales was rejected by two key parties, british coal and
the welsh development agency. bearing in mind the ghandian
''sarvodaya'' concept of development through community, he turned
to the voluntary sector.

the charity earthwatch came up with teams of volunteers, svetla
gentchevba, head of the ecology department at the higher institute
of forest engineering in sofia, agreed to supervise and a local
farmer provided a small plot.

the first trees, planted in 1990, are already providing a
tenuous cover, relieving the bleakness of the terrain. a second,
far larger area, was planted in the winter of 1991/1992.

rather than the bulgarian acacia, the team opted for native
species, planted far more intensively than in normal forestation.
those planted in deeper holes filled with leaf mould have
performed better than those put in with less support.

''the principal is universal, whether the region is tropical or
temperate'', says haigh, ''we are now talking to people in india
and in the black triangle of czechoslovakia about starting similar
projects.'' (end/ips/en/ma/mf/92)

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