Green InfrasTREEcture in the Landscape

The pilot action aims to contribute to the main objective of the project (improving the quality of Green Infrastructure, especially forests and trees) and to the improvement of the policy instrument addressed in Galicia (incorporating the concept of Green Infrastructure in landscape management).
In order for Green Infrastructure and the landscape to reach optimum quality, problems such as the loss of landscape values and the decrease in associated biodiversity, which are evident in areas of recent plot restructuring, in those that have been burned and in those occupied by monoculture eucalyptus plantations, will have to be tackled in Galicia.
The proposed pilot action will seek to increase biodiversity by testing two good practices learned from other European regions during the interregional process of exchange of experiences.
As Galicia is a large region with diverse casuistry, it has been decided to carry out the tests in several areas with different characteristics, where it will be possible a learning by doing. If the results are successful, the experiences can be incorporated into the region's landscape management policy.
The pilot action will consist of two activities, which will be carried out simultaneously, with the collaboration of stakeholders and local people:
- Restoration and monitoring of hedgerows to create ecological corridors that favour connectivity, on the edges of newly executed agricultural roads, where the Regional Administration is carrying out plot restructuring.
- Installation, maintenance and monitoring of wood boxes with mulch in forest plots to mimic the microhabitats, which exist in the cavities of veteran trees, so that they can be colonised by various organisms. Many species would survive until the veteran trees have agieted in an area of plot restructuring and in two AEIPs (Areas of Special Landscape Interest).