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Eco123 Revista da Economia e Ecologia
Saturday 26th October 2024.
Right now, as you start reading this story, a few people are meeting in Cali, a city 500 kilometres west of Bogota in Colombia, for a conference that seeks to turn the unbelievable into reality: turning two thirds of the Earth into a nature reserve. Really? How do you do something like that? I would be very happy if we here in Portugal could protect the district of Monchique and its 400 square kilometres, in all its natural diversity.
I take a pair of binoculars and look at the forest as an example of biodiversity…. Quite green here. Green again. After all that black ash… But what does this tell me if I can’t recognise the wolf in sheep’s clothing? Because not all green is the same. I’ve already learned that much. And is this supposed to be a story about the wolf? Or have I become colour-blind because of all the ‘green’? No.
Nature conservation is such a nice expression, but it shouldn’t really exist. To use it borders on blasphemy. Because almost 98% of the forest is privately owned. And private forestry means “somehow turning wood into money”. Nature has to pay for itself somehow, doesn’t it? When I first discovered these monoculture forests more than 30 years ago, I was shocked. Commercialising forests? Yes, preferably in the form of eucalyptus monocultures, my friend Thomas told me, ironically. But there’s also the liquor lobby with their medronho and much more, my colleague Americo Telo told me. So, we’re talking about exploiting the forest? That’s right.
Where I live, on the southern slope of the Picota massif in the Monchique mountain range, not a single patch of land belongs to the state. However, many of the private owners have given up their land. The eucalyptus now prefers to grow wild and with it two other invasive Australian tree species called acacia and mimosa. Acacia and mimosa? Yes, pioneer plants from Australia. What are they doing here in Portugal? And, above all, who planted them here? Nobody? Nobody.
After a forest fire, one acacia (or mimosa) quickly becomes 50 acacias, 50 acacias soon become 500 acacias and 500 of these trees easily become thousands of acacias and mimosas. There are at least five million acacias currently growing in Monchique. Soon there could be ten million. They came with the forest fires. Their seeds fly in the wind and are fire-resistant. You can watch them grow. I’ve been watching them for six years now, day after day, walking my dog.
A botanist who is familiar with these invasive trees and can explain them would know that under no circumstances should he take a chainsaw to a mimosa or acacia tree. Instead, he should take a small pocketknife, peel the bark off the trunk (see https://invasoras.pt/) and then stay with the tree and wait to see if it is really dying. Is the acacia or mimosa in question slowly drying out? This can take up to three months. On the other hand, if you use a chainsaw, 50 new shoots will grow from the ground within just a few days. I can’t help suspecting that the financial wealth that the eucalyptus has brought to some forest owners in Monchique is now in jeopardy. Acacias and mimosas self-seed and, once they have taken root, they are like a guest who has invited himself to dinner. There is no money to be made from the wood. On the contrary, it costs a lot of money to persuade someone to throw the uninvited guest out again.
There have been five major fires here in Monchique since 1990: July 1991; September 2003; August 2004; September 2016; and August 2018. The landscape, once awarded the EU Natura 2000 network badge, is now completely ruined. But who cares? The ICNF? The GNR? The town hall in Monchique? Any government? The European Commission? None of them.
You have to exploit nature reserves like a mine. But who owns a plot of land of this kind in the Natura 2000 network area if it has been burnt down and then abandoned? No one? If the owner has died and there are no heirs?
Let’s ask the mayor of Monchique who owns the Quinta da Belle France today. He shrugs his shoulders. So, let’s go and ask at the tax office: someone has to pay the property tax for the ruins and the land. No information? Well, let’s go to the Registo Civil. It’s like going from pillar to post and then back again to the orange grove, the apricot trees, the lemons and the clementines – all planted on ten hectares of good soil. When I returned to Esgravatadouro from Monchique after five years of questioning the authorities about the owner, the orchards were all strangled by the acacias and mimosas. All the trees from the good times are now experiencing bad times, and today there are suddenly only acacias and mimosas, one tree five to six metres from the next one, a wall of trees, overgrown, everything green. This year, the olive grove will fall victim to the mimosas and acacias. After that, they will have nothing left to strangle with their taproots and other shallow roots. Acacias and mimosas are called invasive species because they are real killers in nature. The climate of the Monchique mountains is hot and dry in summer and mild and wet in winter, making it ideal for this invasive tree species to multiply explosively right here … Thanks to climate change and the wolf in sheep’s clothing. And now I ask you, dear reader, can you distinguish a mimosa from a jacaranda, an ash from an alder, an acacia from a native almond tree? That’s where the dilemma begins. I can now, because I deal with trees and the forest on a daily basis.
Almost 70% of humanity now lives in cities and no longer has a clue about forests and their trees. The end of one forest fire is always the period of preparation before the next forest fire. In 2004, I received a donation from the largest European tree nursery: a bag of 5,000 young trees arrived at the editorial office to reforest at least part of Monchique: oaks, alders, ash trees, then lime and plane trees, black walnut trees and many other indigenous tree species, even chestnuts. We drew up a plan and asked landowners whether and how we could help them with reforestation. When they asked which trees we had to offer – and whether we also had eucalyptus – I realised that people only wanted to make money from the forest and not protect nature at all. But eucalyptus needs a lot of groundwater and leaches the soil, and acts as a fire accelerator, I replied. And do we have unlimited water in Monchique? We are talking about an area of more than 200 square kilometres of eucalyptus monocultures. Half of the borough is planted with eucalyptus! The soil is now depleted after 40 years, but there is still the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The wolf is not only the enemy of man in fairy tales. The wolf is already mentioned in the Bible, albeit in a sheepskin. What does that mean?
I recently realised why we humans now live in cities and why nature no longer teaches us anything. It seems easier to live in the cities. Living conditions have changed over time in the countryside: it has become warmer and warmer, drier and drier, and we humans are exploiting nature with all kinds of machines. We take and we give nothing in return. We live from nature, but separately. The water comes from the shower and the tap. And what will happen when it stops coming? The springs in the rural district of Monchique have not been providing enough drinking water since 2022. Just under 5,000 inhabitants in almost 3,000 households now get their water in Monchique pumped up the mountain to them from the water supply system in Alcantarilha-Gare. An absurd measure: this is how solutions are currently being sought and found in Monchique.
Next Sunday, after 25 years, the town hall intends to celebrate, with its citizens and visitors, the Feira de Monchique, the so-called harvest festival of the farmers in the borough of the highest mountain in the south of Portugal. The ‘Feira de Monchique’ starts at 10 am and is not due to end until 8 pm. Is there a reason to celebrate? That was the first thought that popped into my mind…
Living conditions have changed considerably since the last Feira de Monchique in 1999. They have been severely affected by several major forest fires, which, in turn, have exacerbated the climate crisis. What we now euphemistically refer to as ‘the water problem’ had already become apparent in 2003. Since the forest fire in August 2018, however, Monchique has been in no doubt at all about its severity: many springs in the mountains no longer provide water. The streams dried up before the summer, in April or May. And why is that?
On the southern side of the massif and wherever invasive tree species are displacing the fire-damaged ecosystems of cork oaks, medronheiro and other fruit trees as pioneer plants, the soil has dried out. Hardly any water, hardly any moisture, is left in the soil; pure drought prevails among those who have stayed behind. Springs and streams have dried up. In just under 25 years, Monchique has not only lost more than half of its population, but also many other resources, including the most important element of all: water. Many properties in the mountains are abandoned, the houses in ruins. People don’t like to talk about this in the town hall: it’s a taboo. It is easy for young people in Monchique to flee the countryside. They move to Portimão, or straight to Lisbon, or away from Portugal altogether. In which future professions do they see the opportunities that they cannot find in Monchique? And now there is the water problem…
Everywhere I’ve raised this issue, I’ve been met with a shrug of the shoulders. More than half of humanity is moving from the villages to the cities and living in the city centres. For most people, biodiversity is just a term used by an exalted elite, with no concrete stories behind it. What does biodiversity mean? Young people have turned their backs on Monchique. That is a fact and there is a deeper reason for it. Do we want to take this seriously?
People no longer recognise the wolf in sheep’s clothing as a danger. Mankind simply carries on as if this wolf did not exist, or as if it were only a sheep. Looking out of the car window at the forest we are driving past gives us no information about the state of nature’s ‘green’ colour; it does not allow us to draw any conclusions about what type of tree in the forest it is or how the forest is doing. And how much water does it leave for us humans? A great deal of knowledge about the forest has been lost over the past two generations. I doubt that city dwellers know the carob tree. Why should they? Anyone who is familiar with the frugality of our native trees and their characteristics will soon realise how important it is to learn to distinguish between invasive and native trees in the forest. And while acacias and mimosas drink our groundwater, the water from Aguas do Algarve SA is pumped up the mountain to us…
The question I ask myself now is: how are 5,000 inhabitants going to cope with 5,000,000 acacias and mimosas? To be honest, the discussion of this question is an important measure that could usefully be started at the Feira de Monchique. And what is the ICNF doing, and what are GEOTA and all the other environmental organisations doing, while boasting about how many trees they have planted? They don’t realise how much danger Monchique is in if acacias and mimosas continue to multiply uncontrollably. And they will continue to do so. In Monchique, in Portugal, they don’t see the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
