Eucalyptus plantations are expanding – and being blamed for devastation
In 2017, 66 people died after fires ripped through eucalyptus stands around Pedrógão Grande. Restrictions on the highly flammable trees have provoked death threats, yet others feel they do not go far enough
The grapevines were the first signs of life to re-emerge, João Duarte remembers. The green leaves appeared after months of living in a black landscape, burned by the inferno that killed two of Duarte’s family. Next to return were the ferns, followed by the cork trees. Then came the eucalyptus, in greater numbers than before.
“I am a little afraid of the eucalyptus. I am not against them. People need money,” says Duarte, a 57-year-old painter who is the gardener at the Pedrógão Grande town hall gardens in central Portugal. “I live in a place surrounded by a green desert of eucalyptus. If another fire comes, it could be worse.”
In 2017, eucalyptus trees burned like roman candles around the villages near Pedrógão Grande, spraying flames high into the sky. The fire reached more than 1,000C (1,832F) in some places, melting ceramics and metal. Of the 66 people who died in the largest wildfire, in June, 47 lost their lives trying to escape in their cars on the EN-236-1, a highway fenced in by thick stands of eucalyptus.
In October that year, more fires burned through the plantations, killing another 45 people. Half of all trees in this part of Portugal are eucalyptus. Its pulp is used to produce toilet roll, paper and alternatives to plastic across Europe and farther afield, in a multibillion-euro industry that is crucial to the Portuguese interior. Despite being a relative newcomer to the country, the species has expanded to represent a quarter of all Portuguese forested area and covers about 10% of the country, according to the most recent forest inventory.
From the Amazon rainforest to California, Madagascar to Spain, monoculture forests are being grown over huge areas, with eucalyptus among the most popular species. A growing number of tree-planting schemes are allocated to carbon offsetting projects and government contributions towards the Paris agreement – with many countries looking to plant increasing swathes of forest to meet their obligations. According on one estimate, eucalyptus plantations cover at least 22m hectares (54m acres) around the world.
But the expansion of these plantations has been accompanied by growing warnings about their safety and ability to reliably sequester carbon. The plantations can threaten native biodiversity, scientists warn, sucking up huge amounts of water and degrading land. And the flammability of eucalyptus oils and bark can pose a deadly fire risk to those living nearby. After a series of megafires in its vast eucalyptus and pine plantations, Chile has excluded them as viable climate solutions in its climate change law, focusing on natural forest regeneration instead.
Duarte says his life was changed for ever the day of the fires. Smoke made it impossible to see anything but fireballs bursting out from the darkness. The images still haunt him: coming home to a mother goose dead on her nest, her wings stretched out over her eggs to protect them from the flames; the look on a neighbour’s face after finding a child and grandmother dead in a car; learning that most of his village, Noderinho, had been burned, killing 11; and the terrible noise of the wind.
“It was like one of those movies after a nuclear war or something. The worst thing for me was the silence. No birds, no people, no cars. Nothing. Just silence. There were thousands of birds dead on the ground,” he says. “I will never be the same, nobody in the village will. We cry for the people, but we also cry for the trees, for the insects, for the ecosystem that disappeared.”
“Many eucalypt trees are not only fire resistant, they are actively fire-promoting,” says Yadvinder Singh Malhi, a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford. “In their native Australia, they thrive by being so flammable; this enables them to outburn and outcompete other less fire-adapted vegetation.
“Introducing monoculture stands of eucalyptus into other regions brings a new and dangerous flammability into ecosystems. Using exotic fire-prone trees for afforestation in tree-planting schemes under a heating and drying climate has the potential to literally backfire, releasing carbon while also risking local tragedy and ecological damage.”
In the years since the fire, Pedrógão Grande and the surrounding villages have sought to make an uneasy peace with the eucalyptus. Restrictions on new plantations have been introduced: roads must be clear of trees for 10 metres on each side; homes must be 100 metres away from the monocultures; and native, less flammable species are being used as buffers.
Almost everyone in the area is linked to the forestry industry in some way, including firefighters and families of people who died. But over time, local people say, the fire and the debate around the plantations have become a taboo. Many just want to move on, and say the eucalyptus has become a scapegoat for poor forest management. Others say confronting the problem is the only way to keep people safe.
On a warm Monday evening, Sofia Ramos and Sofia Carmo are sitting on benches at a village hall, watching a demonstration to local landowners about how to make the perfect aguardente de medronhos, a local fruit brandy. Strawberry trees grow wild in central Portugal and the local government is planting hundreds of them near communities to act as a buffer for future fires, along with other native species.
The work is overseen by Ramos and Carmo in partnership with the town hall president. They hope the native trees will help keep local people safer in future, lessening the risk of another inferno in the plantations.
“Aguardente is too strong for me,” says Ramos the next day as we tour the restoration work by car, stopping to taste the fruit on the side of the road.
The liquor from the fruit is lucrative but requires more work than the eucalyptus blocks, which are often only visited by landowners when they are cut, earning about €3,000 (£2,600) a hectare.
After 2017, the forestry and environment departments were merged at the local town hall as part of reforms. They began removing eucalyptus in some areas for natural regeneration. The town hall has also developed tourism trails and water sports to attract holidaymakers and diversify the local economy. They want to escape the association with the fire, which burned through nearby villages but never actually reached the town.
“It is the first thing that comes up when you Google the town,” says the municipality president, António José Ferreira Lopes.
Ramos’ predecessor, who oversaw the forestry management, used to receive death threats over the restoration work and eucalyptus restrictions. Both women say they still receive them.
“We are not against eucalyptus, but there must be a balance. Forests are about biodiversity. We have all of these trees in plantations. But if you have forest, you have more resilience. That is what we are doing now,” says Carmo, who grew up near Pedrógão Grande and loves the hills. Her father was a firefighter.
“What we learned in the last years is that when catastrophe comes, we are so little. We cannot control everything. I want to believe that it could not happen again. Although what we are doing is small, if everyone does nothing, nothing will change,” she says.
Many plantation owners are angry at the cost of meeting the rules and regulations and think eucalyptus is being blamed unfairly. The forest must be better managed – but not like this, some say.
José Antão, a sawmill operator who employs 12 people cutting trees and removing scrub from the forest to lessen fire risk, is among those irritated by the reforms. He too thought he would die that day with his wife and three children – but he does not blame the eucalyptus.
“The eucalyptus is not the problem. The disorganisation of the forest is the issue, not the trees,” he says.
Navigator, Portugal’s largest pulp and paper producer, did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian about the risks of eucalyptus. In July, CEO António Redondo said that Portugal needed more eucalyptus and was important for reducing plastic usage. He said it was important to “demystify that which people don’t know about the species, which they condemn out of ignorance”.
Ashort drive away from Pedrógão Grande, Dina Duarte, president of the victims association, is closing up the memorial centre, where the names of those that died, including several children, are inscribed.
Dina, who is married to João, shows me distorted metal and ceramics that melted during the fires, explaining their different melting temperatures. Fewer people want to talk about the fires, wanting to move on, she says, but the issues with the eucalyptus have not gone away.
“We have to have the right tree in the right place,” she says. “I know people whose families died from the fires and they are connected to the forestry industry. They don’t want to understand what happened. They want to get on with their lives.
“For me, it was the beginning of being aware about climate change, why it happens and what we have to do to stop it happening again. Our main objective is to work for the future. Things must be different.”
Photograph by Maria Abranches
