It takes place while Izadia Park itself, with…
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It takes place while Izadia Park itself, with its 15 hectares and two lakes, is not yet open to the public. It will be on Friday April 1, with a view to a new season.
We can see from the promenade that borders the park, with the disappearance, during the fire, of the tamarisk hedge that ran along it, that a lot has happened since July 30, 2020. The main scars of the disaster have disappeared. . The rubble of the old building, long left in place due to expertise, was removed a few weeks ago.
Replanting campaigns
The Izadia team, with the help of the public, conducted two replanting campaigns in the part of the park affected by the disaster. Between November 2020 and February 2021, then between November 2021 and February 2022, dozens of trees were planted. Elms, cork oaks, dogwoods, tamarisks: exclusively species that grew naturally in Izadia.
“We only left a parcel as it was, along the Boulevard des Plages, in order to observe how natural regeneration takes place, specifies Dominique Gibaud. We also tried the experiment, in one of the 15 identified habitats present in the park, to introduce holm oaks, which grow in the Landes but were not present in Izadia until then. We do it to see how it will behave in a dune environment, with spray and downwind. »
Glasswort and Knapweed
For all this observation work, Izadia Park works in close collaboration with the Saint-Jean-de-Luz branch of the South Atlantic National Botanical Conservatory (CBNSA). In addition to endemic plants and trees, great attention is also paid to invasive plants, such as fleabane and especially pampas lily of the valley, in order to intervene as quickly as possible to prevent their proliferation.
On the other hand, the glasswort, which was already present in a small part of the park and which has made a remarkable appearance since the fire, is welcomed with pleasure. As for the small tight-leaved knapweed, emblematic of Izadia and extremely rare on a global scale, it was not affected by the fire of Thursday, July 30, 2020.
Birds, squirrels, rabbits and other representatives of the fauna of Izadia also quickly returned to the spaces they had left when the fire approached. “We have provided a lot of nesting boxes, especially for the tits, specifies Dominique Gibaud. They were all occupied very quickly. »
The time for resilience has well and truly come for Izadia Park, as visitors have seen since its reopening. “At the beginning, says Dominique Gibaud, we had many local visitors, who knew that there was a serious fire. But little by little we saw other people coming who didn’t know anything and didn’t notice that anything had changed. »
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