Article

A potential area of around 300.000 hectares of cork oak trees, that turned nowadays to a low density tree cover of less than 50.000 hectares, with a very disturbed or even absent climax environment. This is the case of the world largest cork oak Maamora forest located at the Moroccan Atlantic plain between Rabat and Kenitra cities. Research programs and scientific articles related to this magnificent forest are various and dealt with all its aspects: ecologic, floristic, faunistic, socio-economic, cultural, etc. The future of the Maamora forest, however, causes much concern despite the many initiatives and lots of efforts made to protect, conserve and rehabilitate its ecosystems. Both decision makers and managers failed to refrain this rapid regression and decline of this forest caused mostly by heavy and anarchic human pressure. The authors of this paper try to present an outcome of the situation and presume that nature by itself and through fencing might be the appropriate way to meet the challenge. The current paper is a synthetic review of some of the work done about Maamora forest and the initiatives made to safeguard this green heritage.