More than 10 percent of the area of a UNESCO-listed national park in north-eastern Algeria has been destroyed by the fierce fires that have ravaged the north-eastern part of this Maghreb country in recent days, an expert told AFP on Saturday.
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Endowed with a unique ecosystem in the Mediterranean and classified as a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1990, “El Kala National Park has seen more than 10,000 hectares go up in smoke in recent days,” said academic Rafiq Baba Ahmed.
According to official information, 37 people died in the gigantic fires on Wednesday and Thursday in north-eastern Algeria. Local media reported a 38th victim, a 72-year-old man in Guelma (east), as well as missing.
“In the last 48 hours, firefighters have intervened on 51 fires” in 17 departments and they are still fighting two fires in Tlemcen in the west of the country, the Algerian civil defense said on its Facebook account on Saturday.
El Kala Park, not far from the city of the same name, is considered one of the main reservoirs of biodiversity in the Mediterranean. Covering a total area of almost 80,000 hectares, it is home to several hundred species of birds, mammals and fish, which give it “extraordinary biological richness”, points out Mr. Baba Ahmed, who was the park’s director.
“The El Kala Biosphere Reserve is home to a very remarkable bird fauna, more than 60,000 migratory birds every winter,” says the UNESCO website.
“It is a mosaic of marine, dune, lake and forest ecosystems with its marine strip rich in corals, posidonia seagrass beds and fish,” the UN agency adds.
The north of Algeria is ravaged by forest fires every summer, a phenomenon that is increasing every year due to climate change, leading to droughts and heat waves.
Fires have “always, with one exception or another, affected the massifs of the park,” recalls Mr. Baba Ahmed. And to add: “The forest does not recover, it becomes sparse and develops into a maquis of shrubs, only to end up on bare ground doomed to erosion”.
“The other impact of the fires is the scarcity, if not the disappearance, of animals and plants, and we see this in the region’s emblem, the maned deer, which has disappeared completely for about twenty years. still the lynx,” sees the College “pessimistic” about the future of the park.
Because “over time, fires weaken the forest and make it vulnerable to other attacks, such as harmful insects, but above all human activities,” he emphasizes.
In addition to the damage caused by the fires, “when it was opened up, the forest massifs were fragmented by a dense road network, which encouraged isolated development and the emergence of new places with electricity and gas connections,” he explains.
The biological richness of the park’s wetlands has been “compromised, particularly by aquaculture projects such as restocking with grass carp, which have overtaken the aquatic vegetation on which birds, fish and other crustaceans and molluscs feed,” he concludes.