The coordinator, in association with local “comunidades de montes”, decided to create an international consortium to address this issue from a European perspective, aware that in other EU regions, local communities have a broad and modern approach to forests. In addition to logging activity, a forest can be a place for leisure, walking, sports or relax, and a source of food (berries, mushrooms and nuts). Promoting these uses will allow the population and forest communities to take care of these lands, improving their “health” and keeping them clean to minimize the impact in the event of a forest fire. Publicizing successful practices in other countries would promote respect for nature, in addition to create new opportunities related to the forest and its resources. For this reason, MeetYourForest was created to create dialogue and synergies between the local population and the various economic and social agents related to the forest (forest communities, neighborhood communities, town councils, training centers, etc.) and to develop educational materials that will be freely available so that those people/organizations related to forest management can improve their management.
The coordinator of the project is from Galicia, a predominantly forested area, where a large part of the forest is owned by “comunidades de montes (forest communities)”, associations of people from a small territory. The territory was affected by the serious forest fires of 2017, which forced measures to be taken to prevent forest fires. The problem in the management of the forest by these groups is that they are mainly composed by older people who take care of these resources with an excessively traditional perspective. New forestry and management practices need to be implemented to increase the interest of younger people in caring for forested areas, which are poorly managed due to the lack of a future perspective. It is important to improve knowledge about the range of possible forestry activities, many of them attractive to youth, to motivate them to carry out new activities, which enrich local communities and control forests to avoid the accumulation of biomass that could produce a serious fire, affecting the entire population, as happened in 2017.