Government or owners: who is obligated to carry out forest maintenance?

BarcelonaCatalonia now has double the forests it had in the 1950s – the forest area has gone from 35% of the territory to almost 65% – and the fires of recent weeks — the last one this Friday in Collserola — and a legislative plot twist have strongly reopened a debate that already existed in the sector: on whom should the responsibility fall – and in whose name should the bill go – for maintenance? Currently, only 30% of forests are managed, meaning that active work is being done on them, such as logging, undergrowth clearing, or new plantings. In this context, a small change in a discreet article has revolutionized the sector. As the ARA explained a few months ago, Royal Decree-Law 21/2025, which obliged owners to maintain the land in condition and empowered the administration to do so at a cost – meaning, passing the bill to the owner – mutated during the parliamentary process and went from "obliging" to simply requesting "collaboration." A direct request from the forestry sector.

Rosendo Castelló, president of the owners' association Consorci Forestal de Catalunya, was at the meetings. "They were negotiations with Agriculture and the parties that were quick," he says. "We made them realize that that couldn't be and they immediately agreed to modify it," he explains. Although in some sectors there was talk of a hidden war, the parties deny it. The Director General of Forests of the Generalitat, Jaume Minguell, assures that there is "good understanding" and that the change responded to a need for legal precision. "We interpreted from the outset that state regulations fundamentally establish that this obligation [for owner management] exists, but the ownership understood that the possibility of free execution did not compensate," Minguell details.

Castelló enters directly into the discussion and grounds it: "If you have an asset that costs, let's say, 200 euros, you cannot legally demand that the owner spend double to maintain it," he argues. The representative of private owners refers to the cost of the land in relation to the cost of managing it. In Catalonia, there is more forest than ever due to the exodus from the rural world to the cities. The forest mass has grown quite uncontrollably. We also have a more extreme climate than ever. And to this is added that 76% of forests have private owners: only 24% are in the hands of different public administrations. At present, a forest hectare costs between 1,300 and 1,500 euros on average, while the tasks necessary for forest cleaning amount to 3,000 euros per hectare. More than 90% of these lands, moreover, are not economically exploited either, meaning the owner gains nothing from them.

However, some sectors of the CUP and the commons described the change as a "public gift to large farms" and warned that expenses were being socialized while profits remained in private hands. Jordi Salbanyà, a doctor of law (and owner) and author of a thesis on the duty of conservation, responds emphatically: "It is not true that the benefits of a forest are private! Everyone uses the forest, to walk, to look for mushrooms, because it helps reduce CO₂ emissions, it helps water resources... - he argues -. Only the four who carry out forestry exploitation make money from a forest." "In public parks, for example, they make you pay to park your car. In private ones, woe betide you if you put up a chain! They ripped mine down, and I had put it up precisely because we had managed it, the forest was young and if a branch fell and injured someone, the owner would be liable," he explains.

Salbanyà goes even further and recalls that the law provides for externalities, which benefit everyone, such as the enjoyment of nature or the improvement of air and water resources, to be remunerated. "And they don't do it," he assures, while pointing out that the value of these benefits is estimated at around 941 euros per hectare. Víctor Resco, a professor of forestry engineering at the University of Lleida, agrees, but with nuances. He considers that the ultimate managers of the forest "should be the owners", but accepts that, in return, it would be necessary to "put on a scale" the elements mentioned by Salbanyà and Castelló. "Systematically, from the cities, we city dwellers are freeloading on forest owners. We do it every weekend when we go out to the forest," he says jokingly. An example he uses to highlight that the debate is "complex" and has many facets. However, he considers it incontestable that owners, at a minimum, must collaborate and provide all possible facilities if action is required.

This expert also points out that the debate is stalling because the administration itself is unclear about the roadmap. "There are opposing interests between the technicians of Agriculture and those of the Environment. There are conflicts between those who look for conservation and those who opt for the aspect of management and fire prevention. And fire prevention is not always what is prioritized," he summarizes. For the owners, however, the obligation is "an absurdity," a duty "impossible to fulfill." They give examples. More than half of Catalan forest owners (about 110,000 out of the 200,000 estimated in total) do not even reach one hectare of land, says Castelló, providing data from the Center for Forest Ownership. These are, he says, the most "abandoned" lands.

The (questioned) authority of the administration

The debate becomes complicated when looking at the management of public forests. Salbanyà and Castelló harshly criticize that the administration wants to demand from private owners what it does not do itself: only 36% of public forests are managed. "With what moral or technical authority was the obligation requested from private owners?", ask the owners. This point of the debate brings to the table the eventual capacity of the administration to buy or expropriate forest land that does not comply, but the idea clashes with a clear reality: the administration also lacks the resources.

The director of Forests of the Government, Jaume Minguell, admits that transferring all ownership to the public sector would be "unfeasible" and would not make it work better either. "For any small action we consider, when we multiply it by the large area we have, what happens is that the number is monstrous", he states. He concludes, however, that "the path of cooperation" is the only possible one: "Any other system, in the end, would surely run into social opposition".

It is a vision shared by the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia, a benchmark in the sector. Its president, Antoni Trasobares – who was also Director General of Natural Environment of the Generalitat between 2013 and 2016 – believes that responsibility in management must be joint. "There are minimum obligations [for owners], but at the same time, real help must be provided and farmers and owners must be compensated [...], because this is for everyone," Trasobares told ARA a few weeks ago.

The debate continues to lead, at this point, to a dead end that keeps the administration oscillating halfway between the pressure to carry out actions and constant dialogue with the owners. Managing forests is still a huge task that neither party feels capable of undertaking exclusively.