The forest "Monte río los Valdos" covers 2455 ha of the natural park Saja-Besaya.
It's mainly composed of beech in wetland and shady areas while oaks (Quercus robur and petrea) are growing in sunny places.
An irregular undergrowth is allowed when beech' protagonism is lower.
The forest management is conservative with a low cutting activity. The aim is to protect the diversity and landscape but also the genetic and cultural interest of the site.

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Eucalyptus is one of the world´s most widely used trees by forest industry. Among the more than 500 different species of Eucalyptus, white eucalyptus (E. Globulus) was introduced in Galicia in the middle of the XIXth century. It was rapidly planted all over the north coast side of Spain. Origninally introduced for botanical and ornamental purposes, it soon proved to be well adapted for local forest conditions and wood production. Its sensitivity to cold and frost limited its extension to coastal and low-lying areas. Nevertheless other eucalyptus species, adapted to these climatic conditions, had been tested and introduced on a smaller scale.
The usual production systems involve tree planting in the first rotation and shoot or sprout selection in the next two rotations. The rotation length is between 12 and 15 years and intensive silviculture is applied during that time. The average yield is around 15-20 m3/ha, although it is not unusal to find 30m3/ha or greater for better quality sites. Current tree breeding and technical improvement programs, may result in improved practices. Because of exceptional high productivity the eucalyptus forests have become an important source of income for rural domestic economies in the area. The great majority of wood production is used by pulp industry, although present development and improvements in the eucalyptus wood technology may open the door to future uses such as sawn timber.

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The Atlantic beech forests are the more extensive and better conserved natural forest type in the north of Spain. However, this extensive presence is quite recent, due to expansion all through Europe following the last glaciation. This type of forests is the result of intensive interaction with the human intervention. Those idyllic forests, characterised by straight trunks without branches, clean appearance and a ground cover of fallen leaves that form a carpet are the result of a type of forest management that has been carried out for centuries. Those forests are generally with a regular structure and most of the trees belong to the same age class.
Nevertheless, this is not the reality of most of the beech forest of the west pyrenees regions. Most forests are located in mountain areas with difficult access. Hence, the forests have not been actviely managed for many decades, so now their structure is semirregular with mixed ages and species. Until the sixties, the forests were managed to obtain firewood and this is why many trees orignate from sprouts. Nowadays, it has got several economical final uses such as woodpulp, furnitures, parquet.
Live stock is often present in these mountain forests and this has resulted in stability problems.The future the management of this forests should be adapted to maintain their important protection function. Any harvesting should be carried out using cable cranes or similar technologies to protect the environment and the soils. These interventions should be oriented to obtain high quality and large dimension stems, minimizing the intermediate clearing operations.

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