La Gomera’s lush green valleys have risen from the ashes

TO SEE green shoots rise from blackened branches in the vast swathes of forest destroyed by wildfires in La Gomera in the Canary Islands in August 2012 was at once a joy and a reassurance. 

The fires had made world news. Doomsayers had predicted that 30% of the ancient woodland that had once blanketed the islands and the Mediterranean shores was gone forever. La Gomera, a World Heritage Site, was its last redoubt.

But our hopes in the resilience of nature were slowly coming to pass. The giant heathers and laurels that grow 15m tall in the cloud-forests of the central plateau had not been irrevocably damaged, even by the salt water which the fire-fighter planes had to use when supplies of fresh water were exhausted and villages were imperilled.