Rewilding

Forests are the lungs of the world and autochthonous forests, composed of species original to the site, are the best at helping to mitigate the effects of global warming. We promote a wide range of sustainable projects, currently called nature-based solutions. An example is Rewilding in forest environments in Mediterranean climate.

We have experience, and scientific knowledge for professional support in forest Rewilding. A project carried out almost 30 years ago serves today as a pilot project and is presented on this page and in this video.

More Rewilding projects in forest environments of our authorship were recently concluded.

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In 1996 we were contracted to design a Rewilding project for an eucalyptus stand. A first phytosociological analysis, that is, the botany of plant communities, revealed that it was possible to transform the eucalyptus into a cork oak stand. The eucalyptus trunks were cut and the stumps raised to prevent their growth. At this time, 32 different species of plants lived on these 4.5 hectares, including the first cork oaks and other oak species of around 10 – 20 cm in height.

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The project completely resisted the planting of any tree or other species.

The general objective was to show that it is possible to recover a forest with spontaneous restocking. In the first years after cutting eucalyptus, maintenance was limited to cutting of wild pines, an alien species and, later, to cutting rockrose along paths that pass through the property to reduce fuel.

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The observation of certain species, right at the beginning of the project, even before the removal of the eucalyptus, gave us a lot of confidence in reaching the goal of spontaneous creation of a forest by methods of Rewilding.

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Phytosociology, the botany of plant communities, shows for each location in the world, in the absence of interventions by man, that nature develops a climax vegetation (the most evolved state of development) whose floristic composition is typical for certain natural conditions such as example soil and climate. Are these conditions the same or very similar, naturally the same climax vegetation develops.

The species observed at the beginning of the project already pointed to the development of a cork oak wood with the presence of many other oak species.

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After nearly 30 years of duration of the project, the number of species has increased from 32 to more than 300. There are 8 different taxa (species or hybrids) of the genus Quercus, most of them are cork trees and Portuguese oaks.

The economic study for this project shows that, compared to an eucalyptus stand, the economic yield after 25 years is about 5-6 times higher. In this forest there are so many products: Wild fruits such as mushrooms, strawberry trees and aromatic herbs. Trees offer a wide range of natural products that can be used as cork, firewood and hardwood.