The chainsaw massacre: when a Spanish company ravages private land in the Pyrenees

Christophe Segato looks up. On the horizon this Tuesday afternoon, a clear sky. Blue but more green. “Before, I was in awe, there were 300 fir trees, they were beautiful, up to 40 m high, they had been planted in 1964.” In his eyes, his “little piece of paradise” in Perles-et -Castelet (Ariège) has metamorphosed into "Mordor", this land of hell in the Lord of the Rings. In this apocalyptic setting with a handful of groves of the national road leading to Andorra stand out a stump cemetery, a shroud of dead branches, scattered logs, ruts that look like trenches and a mini-pond soiled by oil and diesel. In the middle flowed a stream… diverted by the tires of the mastodons.

The farmhouse, renovated into a chalet serving as a second home, is completely bare, stripped of its green setting.

“Coming back here is painful every time,” comments the 40-year-old from the Toulouse region.

His mother Danielle is even more inconsolable.

“I'm sick of it.

When I found out about this, I wanted to throw up.

It was a place of serenity bought by my husband in 1989 and deceased since.

It was his forest.

We have the impression of going through a second mourning.

But why did they do this to me?

»She saddens in front of the battlefield.

“We lose more than 30 years of memories,” continues his son, a dronist by profession.

This is what the forest around the Segato chalet looked like before the logging carried out by the loggers.

(DR) DR

Looks like a historic tornado has passed through there. But nature has nothing to do with it. Man is the one and only responsible. The Segatos had wood stolen, like other families in the area. This week, these victims unfurled a banner “Stop the massacre of our forests” between two surviving oak trees. Sixteen owners of private plots, united in a collective, have filed a complaint for theft with degradation, an offense punishable by 5 years of imprisonment. "Thefts of such magnitude, I have never seen that, it is a well organized sector", denounces Jérôme Moret, adviser from Ariège at the National Center for Forest Property. An area of ​​4 ha, the equivalent of 6 football fields, has been disfigured without the slightest agreement. These illegal harvests concern around 400 trees."Spruces can be transformed into pallets, ash trees into stairs and oaks into railway sleepers or framework", explains the expert.

A forest slaughtered in the # Pyrenees, century-old oaks illegally felled https://t.co/qslBipq0Bm pic.twitter.com/N2ABHbDJvn

- France Bleu Occitanie (@bleuoccitanie) March 17, 2021

In addition to the cuts, soils were polluted with hydrocarbons, paths rutted by machinery, dry stone walls (delimiting the plots) ransacked and fuel cans abandoned.

The damage amounts to hundreds of thousands of euros because of the astronomical costs of "repair".

“Look at what is going on in the Amazon.

Well, on a smaller scale of course, it happens with us!

»Is alarmed Gérard Durand, mayor (without label) of the village of 228 souls.

“There is theft of wood every year.

But there, for me, there is some unusual logistics for this type of offense, ”describes Laurent Dumaine, prosecutor of Foix.

"They came back in the night to load everything"

Yves Rameil, owner of a plot inherited from his ancestors, is the whistleblower. On February 25 at the end of the morning, this retired nurse, intrigued by the noise of chainsaws below, went to his land along the RN 20. Century-old oak trees were beheaded there. “I had chills and tears in my eyes. Three lumberjacks are in action. He speaks to one of them sharpening the chain of his chainsaw. "I summon him to stop:

You are at my place, there!

He replies:

Not understanding

. Another said to me:

The boss has permission

Says the septuagenarian with an d'Artagnan-style mustache, studded cowboy boots and a cowboy tie. Then he immortalizes, with his phone, the white 4x4 parked next to it. “The guys were following me, they didn't want me to take pictures,” he continues. On the trunk of the Toyota registered in Spain are the contact details of a company of “forest explosions” of a man named Mr. Bautista.

While the intruders finish their mission, he rushes to warn the mayor "Gégé", who "goes down" immediately.

The councilor joins the boss.

“He told me he had permissions.

I asked him if he was making fun of me, that if he had had any, I would have been the first to know, ”reports the elected official inseparable from his khaki jacket with multiple pockets and his Ariège beret flocked with a cross. Occitan.

The employees flee.

“But they came back in the night to load everything.

We did not see anything because the trucks do not pass through the village.

"

Yves and Hélène Rameil surprised the loggers in the act at the end of February.

LP / Sam Decout

To put an end to the looting, the access road is blocked by an earth dam. It's time to take stock. A host of owners realize that they are missing trees. "Ten for me", figure Lydia Graulle, 71 years old. “If we want wood, they ask me. There, they do not bother the life, they used, it is called the scam ”, she indignantly. "It is as if we were trampling on our elders who planted them," said Philippe Bonrepaux, who "heard nothing". “Mr. Mayor”, he has three oaks less. For Hélène Rameil, the sentimental value of this barked heritage is inestimable. “It's stupid but we, the trees, we hug them sometimes. We also came to observe wild boars, roe deer, squirrels… ”, she recounts. “There are even morels here,” reveals her husband Yves.

His lumberjacks were "wrong"

Three weeks after the devastation, Manuel Bautista, director of the company based in Solsona, 150 km from the city of Ariège, sends an email to the town hall.

“The first thing is to show you all my regrets for what happened and for the damage caused.

"He suggests compensation of" 200 € "per oak and" 20 € per m3 of spruce ".

He undertakes to replant and carry out the “necessary work”.

But the first magistrate and his “despoiled” citizens do not want this “deal” and prefer to rely on justice.

"We must condemn this company, let it serve as an example, that these practices do not go unpunished," insists one of the complainants, Eric Bonrepaux, relieved of sixteen oaks.

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We asked Manuel Bautista to meet him at his home in Spain.

He declined the offer "because of the Covid" but agreed to answer our questions by phone in French.

He swears he's not a thief, let alone a tree trafficker.

In fact, his loggers “got it wrong” within the limits.

"It's a mistake, I am responsible, I will pay the consequences.

I am very sorry, I apologize.

"Jérôme Moret, forestry advisor, does not believe for a single second in the dumpling, because" there is too much evidence ".

The boom in green houses is driving up demand for wood

According to Manuel Bautista, the wood sliced ​​by “mistake” was transported to the other side of the Pyrenees, “to different sawmills” in his stronghold of which he does not know the names. But how did this Catalan land in Perles-et-Castelet? In this area close to the border, the Spaniards are interested in private or public forests "made in France", in search of a resource that has become precious and juicy. The demand for this green gold is currently very strong, at home as elsewhere, due, in particular, to the boom in the construction of green houses. "We have in France a raw material of excellent quality, in particular oaks whose price has doubled in 5 years, which attracts envy", summarizes Nicolas Douzain, general delegate of the National Federation of wood (FNB). "Steal wood,it's cheaper than buying it except when you get caught, ”quipped Didier Inard, one of the presidents of FNB Occitanie, at the head of a sawmill in Aude. The logs acquired by the Iberians are often treated in their sawmills and sometimes return to their native land, resuscitating for example on our construction sites.

The mayor of Perles-et-Castelet, Gérard Durand, is also one of the victims.

Three of his oak trees have been felled.

LP / Sam Decout

Initially, Manuel Bautista landed in Perles-et-Castelet to exploit, according to him, a plot belonging to Augustin Bonrepaux, former socialist deputy and former president of the departmental council of Ariège, who therefore sold him wood.

“We have a contract with this client,” assures the Catalan entrepreneur.

“The cup took place in November.

Then there was snow so they left, then they came back, ”explains Mayor Gérard Durand.

Due to a mistake, as Manuel Bautista claims, the loggers would then have overwhelmed the neighbors.

What does Augustin Bonrepaux think of this?

The octogenarian has been silent since the beginning of this story.

"He is embarrassed to be indirectly the trigger", interprets one of the targets of unclaimed deforestation.

We knock on the former parliamentarian, in Orlu, a village 14 km from Perles-et-Castelet.

His wife opens.

"He does not want to speak for the moment, he is tired, he is resting ..." At the most, she lets go that "the contract has been honored", that "it is settled".

But then why did her husband also file a complaint for the illegal felling of two trees?

“Out of solidarity.

"

Bautista, a company that has often left bad memories

In Ariège as in the surrounding departments, the Bautista house has often left bad memories in recent years and does not have "a very good reputation" according to multiple sources. Christian Aragou, mayor of Bousquet (Aude), no longer wants to hear about it. “She tries to recover from public sales and then repairs them to private owners. In the end, she leaves the forest in a bad state. She doesn't play by the rules. Once, we had to stop the cut, I fired it, ”he moans. “Mr. Bautista is unfavorably known by all my colleagues,” points out Didier Inard, at the controls of a sawmill on the edge of Carcassonne. He himself "always distrusted this individual". "We were neighbors on a site and he got the wrong boundaries on a piece of land mine", he reproaches,while recalling that there are "serious Spanish companies with which we have no problem".

Visit of COFOR09 in Perles in support of the municipality affected by stolen wood! @AnemMontagne @communes_forest @PARC_PA @fncofor pic.twitter.com/fJCNnCuuzA

- Frédéric Laffont (@MairieLaffont) April 13, 2021

Manuel Bautista rejects these accusations outright.

"It's not true, we do our job the best we can," he assures us.

“He's one of our suppliers, we've never had any problems with him.

We are honest people ”, defends his compatriot Jordi Calvet, manager of the Efausa sawmill in the Catalan Pyrenees.

Stéphane Villarubias, territorial director of the National Forestry Office (ONF), also has nothing to complain about.

“In public forests, we have no more difficulties with him than with others.

We still have staff on the ground to ensure that everything is well respected.

It is framed and monitored, ”he summarizes.

Local "touts"?

For most of the specialists we interviewed, the Spanish entrepreneur could not have acted alone in Ariège and would have local contacts with “knowledge of the field” in order to identify private plots. It is up to the investigation entrusted to two services including the Pamiers research brigade to shed light on these unclear cuts. "If there are touts, they must answer for their responsibilities," warns prosecutor Laurent Dumaine.

The investigations promise to be "complex". “But we are putting the means there. It is up to my prosecution to set itself up as a defender of the environment in my department, ”asserts the magistrate. In the meantime, on the scene of the chainsaw massacre, the vegetation begins to take over, the brambles are trying to cover some wounds. On a pile of logs having escaped the raid, Yves Rameil tagged in fluorescent yellow paint: “No touch. "