The Deadly Toll Of Eucalyptus Monoculture Reveals Itself In 2017 Inferno In Portugal
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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.”
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“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.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/24/eucalyptus-plantations-are-expanding-and-being-blamed-for-devastation-pedrogao-grande-aoe
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