Forest management
Eucalyptus matures in 12 years - cork needs 25
© WWF-Canon / M. GUNTHER
Forests should provide a balanced range of products and services.
But intensive livestock and agriculture are often favoured, reducing tree coverage, destroying forest structure, and reducing regeneration in large cork oak areas.
Current management also sometimes promotes “homogeneity” – trees all the same age, and this can lead to forest stands ageing together which impoverishes the understorey and weakens the forest.
Other problems in North Africa, where the rural population is growing fast, are overgrazing, poor harvesting techniques, conversion to other uses (such as cannabis in northern Morocco), increased collection of wood for fuel, and charcoal production.
Harvesting techniques
The case of Morocco is especially alarming: the coastal cork oak forest of Maamora covered about 3,000 sq km at the end of the 19th century; only 600 remain.
In Tunisia an estimated 5 per cent of trees die every year because of poor harvesting techniques.
In the south of the Iberian peninsula and in North Africa, some cork oak forests have been converted to eucalyptus – exotic trees from Australia which only take 12 years to mature compared to 25 for cork, making them more profitable for the economy, especially the paper industry one.
Degraded or converted forests are more vulnerable to fires – sometimes started deliberately to provide land for agriculture, pasture, or development. They are also weaker to face desertification.
Climate change exacerbates these threats and affects the health of cork oak landscapes, increasing their vulnerability to disease, pests, and forest fires.
