Forest Stories The Corbières Forest

that there were always chickens wandering around the village when they were children, so presumably eggs would have been a source of protein with a boiling fowl - an old chicken that no was no longer laying eggs - as the base of an ocasional stew.

Other than that, people used the natural resources around them to sustain themselves. They picked wild plants to use as vegetables and in different seasons, picked wild-growing fruit, often to preserve for use during the cold months. During the Winter, food supplies would have been supplemented by what the hunters managed to catch - usually wild boar, but also small game such as rabbit or hare.

I cannot imagine that the small river passing through the village, La Robine, contained much that was edible although no doubt hungry people would take from it what they could such as frogs and bony fish.

Only now, while working on this project, ‘Forest Stories’, do I realise that people in 1900 did not have recourse to the forest. Their grandparents would have known a little of the forest, perhaps, but by 1850 it was all but gone.

From the beginning of the 18th century, sheep rearing had been an important economic factor in the life of the Corbières, reaching such proportions that official figuresshow that by 1830 there were 615, 000 sheep in the region. That’s a lot of land occupied by beasts that spend most of the day eating.

The last of the hillside forest was cut down to make way for pasture land for the sheep. To provide shelter for these animals, and with the forest gone, stone shelters known as granges were built which the sheep entered every night. Not all granges were out on the deforested hills, some were built in villages such as in the case of my own house, where the grange was built as an annexe. The positioning of these granges and their nightly use as shelters for sheep, indicates that people were constantly crisscrossing the landscape to let sheep out onto the hillsides in the morning, tending the sheep during the day, fastening them into the granges at night, and taking the sheep to market or for slaughter.

This means that for the best part of 200 years, the hillsides would have been almost constantly filled with activity which by the early 20th century had virtually ceased although a few stragglers remained. According to one village resident, the last sheep in Coustouge were sent to market in 1937 but the sheep economy had come to an end long before then as the vine had had taken over as the new monoculture.

Geography, Climate and History

The Corbières Massif is mostly situated in the département of the Aude, extending a little into the Pyrenées Orientales. The massif is bounded to north and west by the river Aude, by the Mediterranean to the east and the Fenouillèdes region to the south.

The principal towns of the Corbières are Carcassonne (the Préfecture of the Aude), Narbonne (Sous-Préfecture) Tuchan and Rivesaltes. The Corbières mountains appeared about 65 million years ago at the start of the Cenozoic, the geological era that saw the ascendancy of mammals, The mountains are formed mostly of limestone, which is is highly soluble in water, attaining heights of between 400 and 500 metres. Erosion over millenia by wind, rain and rivers has created wide valleys and deep gorges and frequently softened the aspect of once-rugged mountain peaks. Today the landscape is noted for its typically Mediterranean flora formed into ‘garrigues’ (scrubland) pine forests and an undergrowth of holm oak. Today’s distribution of flora has been brought about by human activities particularly as noted above, animal husbandry and viticulture. Even today’s ‘garrigue’ is not the scrubland of a thousand years ago. Clearing the garrigue to make way for sheep has destroyed the original ‘thick’ scrubland to make way for today’s ‘thin’ chaparral.

Climate

The Corbières climate is Mediterranean typified by high heat in the Summer traditionally with short periods of between 30C and 40C. although these high temperatures have become very common in recent years. There is generally little rain during the Summer months although there are occasional intense thunder storms. Autumn is the period of most rain. A number of rivers - such as the Aude, the Orbieu and the Agly - run through the region.

History

By the time of the Arab invasions (719 - 759) the Corbières had already been fortified by the Visigoths. In 865, after the Moors had been vanquished, Charles the Bald, King of France, divided the former Roman and then Visigoth province with the southern region going to the Count of Barcelona, and northern section marked by the Corbières massif being given to the jurisdiciton of Narbonne.

To the south of the Corbières lies the region of Rousillon which in the Middle Ages became wealthy and in 1180 were attached to the crown of Aragon then to that of Spain thus making the Corbières a heavily defended border region, hence so many hill top fortifications.

The Cathars

All points of passage from north to south were controlled by a set of castles: Peyrepertuse, Quéribus, Puilaurens, Aguilar, Termes, etc.. The Languedoc (the larger region of which the Corbières is a part), at first under the suzerainty of the kingdom of Aragon, came under the control of the kings of France during the Albigensian crusade. The Albigensians, or ‘Cathars’ formed a Christian gnostic movement between the 12th adn 14th centuries. They are mainly remembered today because of their persecution by the Catholic church.

The Renaissance

With the proliferation of firearms and canon across the defenses of the Corbières, it was very difficult for any army to invade from the south unless they took the route of the mosquito-infested lagoons at the coast.

Ulitmately, in 1659, the Traty of the Pyrenées put an end to the military history of the Corbières.

Forests are important for People

Forests cover around one third of all land on Earth - it used to be a lot more - and breathe life into our world but it is not just the planet that suffers when they are destroyed. As we have seen in the Corbières, forests are important for people’s lives, homes and livelihoods. They have a crucial role to play in tackling the biodiversity and climate crises. Forest products are a vital part of our daily lives from paper to wood products and by-products used in medicines, cosmetics and detergents.

Over 1.6 billion people depend on forests for food or fuel, and some 70 million people across the world call forests home. Forests provide us with oxygen, shelter, jobs, water, nourishment and fuel. With so many people dependent on forests, the fate of our forests may determine our own fate as well.

Forests help prevent erosion and enrich and conserve soil, helping to protect communities from landslides and floods and producing the rich topsoil needed to grow plants and crops. Forests also play an important role in the global water cycle, moving water across the earth by releasing