Portugal
Portugal
At-A-Glance
- Country/Region: Viseu, Portugal
- Active Since: 2020
- Trees planted: +135,000
- Total area: +180 ha
- 2022 planting season: TBC
- Scale-up potential: In conversation with local landowners to extend the area
Impact Highlights
- Combating desertification and restoring lost biodiversity through reforestation
- Improving the environmental and socio-economic conditions in the region to help reverse population decline and land abandonment
About the site
The Viseu region in Portugal is an impressive landscape and gives a fantastic view over the mountain. It includes three parishes: Abrunhosa a Velha, Santiago de Cassurrães and Freixiosa. It is common to observe foxes, some eagles, squirrels, wild rabbits, partridges, hares, turtle doves and lizards in this area.
At the foot of the mountain, near the town of Tragos, there was a uranium mine, Pinhal do Souto, which was mined underground between 1978 and 1989, having produced 93,091 kg of U3O8. Two dumps remained in the area, partially covered by natural vegetation. A quartz vein containing autunite and torbernite was also explored at this mine.
Why reforest here
In general, there are a lot of wildfires in Portugal, the reasons behind them are quite extensive and vary from planned forest fires getting out of hand to abandonment. And in some cases, fires are intentional. We see an increased awareness after massive wildfires that even had human casualties. A severe forest fire burnt 50-60% of the community area.
Tree species selection
We select native, diverse and climate (change) resilient species, often co-determined with our local partners to meet the desired restoration impact. A typical Land Life planting commonly has 8 to 15 different native species, where layouts and species mixes are further refined at the sub-plot level to reduce the likelihood of fire, pests or disease spreading.