In my last post, I wrote about how parts of Porto reminded me of my home in Northern California. It turns out that those glimpses of home really weren’t that hard to find. It averaged about 75 degrees at day and cooled to the low 60s at night — like a perfect day in San Francisco. The breeze along the coast is crisp and cold, like Ocean Beach, and the waves were just as ready-made for surfing. And, just like my neighborhood in Berkeley, the air smells like eucalyptus.
I knew Portugal had more eucalyptus trees (at least proportionally) than anywhere else in the EU. It was one of the reasons I chose it as a stop on this journey. And yet, the sheer number of eucalyptus groves we passed on the drive through the northern Portuguese countryside was shocking. The trees’ thin, tall, top-heavy shape made them easily recognizable from the highway — the forests were far too thick to see through and plentiful to count. The further into central Portugal we drove, the more this proved to be true. It, too, reminded me of road trips through Northern California, with rolling hills covered in deep green forest as far as your eyes could see. But, unlike even California, almost every tree was a eucalyptus. They were often coupled with pine trees, which grew just underneath their canopies.
Eucalypts are widely known as one of the most fire-prone tree species. Their oily leaves and light, papery bark are as good as kindling. They’re also particularly good at blowing in the wind, helping fires cross fuel breaks easily. It’s non-native and fast-growing in Mediterranean climates; a native, well-managed grove might benefit from low-intensity burns, but these forests can otherwise turn average forest fires into megafire disasters. The City of Berkeley has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to remove eucalyptus from my neighborhood at home. But here, tall, mature trees are punctuated by smaller, lighter green, young eucalyptus. These trees are actually an important part of the economy here — because the soil is not nutrient-dense enough for most lots of traditional agriculture, companies rely on these fast-growing trees to create paper paste. While some of the groves seem natural enough, you can actually see the manufactured rows of eucalyptus as you drive by, almost like giant vineyards.
On Tuesday, we drove 30 minutes south to visit Pedrógão Grande, an area impacted by two of the deadliest fires in recent Portuguese history. In June 2017, over 60 people died after being told to evacuate due to fire risk, most of whom were burned while sitting in traffic on the one main road out of town. While many houses and businesses were destroyed, only one or two people actually died at home. Less than five months later, a fire spread in a very nearby area, and almost 50 more died, most of whom had stayed home. This story of paradoxical tragedy was one of many that inspired this research project, but a tale that has always stuck in my head as particularly haunting.
I find I have mixed feelings about visiting the sites of these fires. So many of my activities blur the line between leisure and work, and it’s a bit sickening to think of visiting the site of so much death as some kind of tourist. I remind myself that I really am here for research, but still. There’s a memorial on the side of the highway where the worst of the deaths happened in that first fire: a huge brutalist-style fountain and a set of plaques with the names of the deceased. It’s covered in stones, cards, and flowers, a mix of fresh, dried, and plastic. Just seven years ago, this forest was completely blackened by fire. You can still see signs of it, a burned tree stump here and there. But the scorch marks are greatly outnumbered by a brand new grove of eucalyptus, planted in vineyard-style rows, so tall it is hard to believe they are less than a decade old.
The eucalyptus trees near Pedrógão Grande. Note the uniform gap in between rows, as well as the burnt stump in the bottom left.
The fact that this town has been purposely repopulated with the very trees that fueled such a devastating fire disaster just a few years ago probably sounds insane. When one of my interviewees explained it to me, I certainly thought it was crazy. But planting more eucalyptus over burn areas is actually very common in Portugal. From the car window, I saw several forests that had clearly burned much more recently than Pedrógão Grande covered in miniature trees with those characteristically light green leaves. As experts explained to me, eucalyptus is too important to the economy (and at this point too plentiful) to do away with. Because of the changing climate and historical forestry patterns, native forests are too slow-growing. And, to make matters worse, about 97% of Portugal’s forests are divided into small, private plots, many owned by city dwellers or even dead people. It is nearly impossible to do prescribed burns or otherwise take preventative measures against wildfires on a large scale.
The eucalyptus groves across Portugal likely seem benign to most. For locals, they probably just seem like trees. But for me, their story accumulates to prove that wildfire disasters are far from “natural”. They are driven by a variety of factors: social, economic, cultural, political. As I was planning this project, I was worried that comparing the causes and responses to fire across different contexts would prove futile in generating effective solutions — ultimately, every fire is so specific to its region, country, ecology, etc. But my conversations with experts have encouraged me — when creating disaster response programs, they often look at examples set by other countries for how they can improve. I might not be the one to come up with all the answers, almost certainly not on this trip, but it’s nonetheless energizing to be learning so much about this topic every day. My interviews and field trips make me excited to see the final product of all this work.