80 years ago Portugal planted an Australian tree to stabilize its soils. Radically changed the way fires spread

In the 1950s, much of Europe resorted to large reforestation programs to curb erosion and supply wood to a rebuilding economy. Portugal, for example, opted for an Australian tree which seemed perfect to hold down their soils and feed their paper industry. Eight decades later, that decision is still written on the ground: it forever changed the way fire spreads across the country.

The solution of a problem. to understand the current crisis You have to travel to Portugal in the fifties. The country was suffering serious erosion problems, large rural areas were being depopulated, and Salazar’s dictatorship sought to promote a forestry industry capable of generating wealth.

That was the main reason that the eucalyptus seems to gather all the qualities imaginable: it grew very quickly, fixed degraded land and provided excellent raw material for the manufacture of paper. What then seemed like an almost unquestionable decision would end up altering the behavior of fires for generations.

He not only planted, he transformed his landscape. The real change was not introducing a new species, but redesign the territory. Where previously there was a mosaic of crops, pastures and diverse forests, huge continuous areas of pine trees and, especially, eucalyptus trees began to spread.

This new landscape was much more profitable from the economic point of viewbut it also eliminated many of the natural barriers that previously hindered the fire’s advance. Without knowing it, Portugal had created a scenario in which flames could travel for kilometers much more easily.

Eucalyptus does not cause fires, it transforms them. One of the biggest mistakes is to think that the tree is the origin of the problem. Fires can start for multiple reasons, but the eucalyptus radically changes his behavior once the flames appear. Its essential oils are extremely flammable and, when they reach sufficient temperature, they cause the tree to burn with enormous intensity.

Added to this is a fibrous crust It is easily detached and transported by the wind, converted into small embers capable of crossing roads, rivers or firebreaks and causing new outbreaks hundreds of meters from the main fire.

When the forest becomes fuel. Fast-growing industrial plantations have little to do with a mature and diverse forest. Being practically made up of a single species, store less carbon long term and offer much less resistance to the advance of the fire than ecosystems where trees of different characteristics and a more humid undergrowth coexist.

The result is a vicious circle: Fires return again and again to the same areas, making it difficult for the landscape to recover the diversity that would precisely help stop future large fires.

Climate change and a threat. Increasingly frequent heat waves and prolonged droughts have multiplied the risk that this forest model already presented. This year and same as in SpainPortugal is once again facing one of its worst fire campaigns, with tens of thousands of hectares devastated and thousands of interventions by emergency services.

The magnitude of the situation has even forced the Portuguese Government to activate the European Civil Protection Mechanism to request international help, aware that some fires already exceed the response capacity of a single country.

The solution is not just to put out fires. The experts match in which fighting the flames will be insufficient as long as the landscape continues to favor its spread. The challenge is to recover mixed forests, reintroduce agricultural and livestock activities that fragment the continuity of plant fuel, and diversify forest species.

In short, it is about rebuilding little by little a territory that for decades was designed with productivity in mind and not resilience against fire.

The consequences of a decision from almost a century ago. The history of the Portuguese eucalyptus demonstrate that some political decisions transform a country far beyond what those who promoted them imagined. What began as an ambitious program to protect the soil and strengthen the economy ended up modifying the country itself. forest fire dynamics.

Eighty years later, the great challenge no longer consists only in putting out the summer fires, but in reversing a landscape whose configuration favors each new heat wave to find terrain that is increasingly prepared to burn.

Image | anagh

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