Since the terrible fires of July 2022, more than 518,000 tonnes of damaged wood have been cut down in the used forest. Stocks sold for a sum of around 8 million euros, according to the Teste-de-Buch town hall.
Le Figaro Bordeaux
Two years after the terrible fires which ravaged the Gironde, only 10% of the 7,000 hectares of peaks which shaped the landscape of the used forest remain. From Gujean Mestras to Teste de Buch, 518,000 tonnes of wood were cut to secure the massif and eradicate the bark beetles, whose invasion completed “the carnage” started by the flames.
Managed by the general unions, the sale of these stocks of wood – those cut in the national forest included – is estimated between 8 and 8.5 million euros according to declarations in the municipal council of the town hall of Teste-de -Buch, last Thursday. An audit carried out by Sylgéco is underway in order to precisely consolidate these figures and deduct the costs of work carried out to rebuild the forest roads after the fires. These figures will also need to be smoothed because the lots of cut wood were sold at different prices.
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Medieval law
Once the sales figures have been consolidated, the general syndicates will have to distribute them in tonnage per plot in order to determine the amounts to be paid to each owner. However, they will not receive all of the gains made. The user forest of Teste-de-Buch and Gujan-Mestras is in fact governed by specific laws which date from the Middle Ages. A singularity which implies the “law of sixths” : three shares go to the owners, the fourth is paid to the union fund which maintains this forest and the last two respectively to the local authorities where it is located.
To benefit from the income extracted from these sales, the owners concerned will have to present their property titles. In this user forest, this situation is indeed exceptional. “None of us had invested in the forest thinking of generating income”explains Matthieu Cabaussel, the vice-president of the owners’ union. The situation thus forces general unions to ask themselves many questions about the future. What about in particular the right of use, which implies that the inhabitants of Teste-de-Buch and Gujean-Mestras can use timber while there are only 10% of standing trees left in the forest? A “set aside” of the forest while it regenerates should indeed be necessary, while it will probably be necessary to wait two centuries before good timber can once again be extracted from these plots.
