These are the Australian trees that dominate many of the mountains in northern Spain. Exotic and invasive species, inherited from the Franco dictatorship, which found in the eucalyptus the formula to repopulate the meadows which were no longer suitable for grazing or the lands which were no longer cultivated, at the end of the 1940s and in the early 1950s. Defended by the newspaper. and the wood industry and demonized by environmentalists and biologists, the eucalyptus struggle is a struggle that has continued over the years on the basis of a dichotomy: environmental impact or economic benefit.
The Cantabrian coast is the one that takes the cake in terms of cultivated hectares, so in Galicia there are a total of 174,000 hectares cultivated with eucalyptus, more than 60,000 in Asturias, 39,000 in Cantabria and 14,500 in the Basque Country .
In Asturias, eight percent of forest land is devoted to the cultivation of eucalyptus, it is the species that occupies the least area and from which the most exploitation is obtained, according to Profoas, the Association of Owners foresters of the Principality. From Profoas, its president, Iván Fernández, explains the reason why they demand cultivation alternatives that are incorporated into those authorized, with the aim of generating optimal forest masses and preventing the forest from falling into neglect, becoming potential pasture for fires. “These are the most profitable forests there are and the owners take great care of them,” he says.
Precisely, the high flammability of eucalyptus wood is one of the risks that the massive cultivation of this species entails, according to the environmental biologist Xabier Vázquez Pumariño, who assures that administrations should ask themselves how much money is being made with the eucalyptus and lost by not dedicating the land to other types of crops. From Galicia, he has been fighting the cultivation of eucalyptus for years and announces that Asturias will soon find itself in the same situation as the neighboring community, if it does not change the course of its forest policy, due to the effect flammable of this species and its consequences, therefore, in the propagation of fires.
“Where there is eucalyptus, there is nothing else,” explains Puamriño, who explains that native species disappear when eucalyptus appears because coexistence with this exotic species is impossible: biodiversity disappears. Short cutting cycles, CO2 emissions higher than those they retain or the generation of traces that favor the movement of water during periods of heavy rain are other negative consequences of eucalyptus, for this biologist Galician.
Asturias Forest Plan
The Government of the Principality of Asturias is currently immersed in the complete revision of the Forest Plan, with the preparation of a document that will be valid until 2036 and aims to update the Action Plan, which dates from 2001, to , among other issues, follows up on the new forestry law.
In this new regulation, the Principality plans to meet the demand of eucalyptus producers and authorize an increase in the species to be cultivated. Asturias will thus integrate the culture of Globular eucalyptuswhich according to biologists and ecologists “collapsed the Asturian thing”, that of Eucalyptus nitens, a species banned until 2009 due to its capacity for expansion and its impact on the rural environment, and adapted to cultivation at altitude, because it resists frost and can be cultivated from 500 meters, altitude that the “globulus” does not support.
From the Asturian government, Javier Vigil, director of Forestry Policy, defends that at no time has the Principality intended to increase the authorized area for the cultivation of eucalyptus, which is currently around 65,000 hectares, and that is not even the case. demand from the sector. However, the Asturian director understands that it is necessary to allow cultivation beyond the limit Globulebecause there are areas of Asturias in which eucalyptus plantations present phytosanitary problems.
Despite calls for calm from the Asturian Executive, which assures that areas will remain limited and that under no circumstances will the cultivation of species that have not passed the corresponding studies be authorized, biologists and ecologists are protesting, because they understand that the region should strive to repair the damage caused, and not to promote the cultivation of eucalyptus.
According to Hugo Robles, professor of zoology at the University of Oviedo, we must repair the damage caused after decades of cultivation with negative impacts on biodiversity, such as simplification and loss of species, because native species cannot not germinate under the eucalyptus trees, he laments. .
This university professor is clear on the path to follow and it is none other than that which aims to gradually eliminate the cultivation of eucalyptus and its replacement by local species, as they have done, he explains, in the Monfragüe national park. Soil impoverishment, loss of biodiversity which gives rise to the generation of parasites or water resource problems, due to the excess water absorbed by the eucalyptus, are other negative consequences for Robles.
The Asturian government claims that forestry is just one industry among others, generating jobs and economic benefits for the region. The Director General of Forestry Policy explains that the Principality’s regulations are scrupulous, and it is precisely thanks to these regulations, which he describes as strict, that there is no room for insecurity or fear. Thus, he stressed that the regulations for the marketing of wood are clear and that the European Union prevents the marketing of products resulting from deforestation, “if you do not respect them, you will have problems”, he said.
The Asturian Government plans to have the advanced document of the new Forestry Plan in the first half of 2025, this will be the last step for its final approval.
More of the same
Although still a draft, the document clearly indicates to Asturian environmentalists that eucalyptus cultivation will continue in Asturias. Pedro Zamora, from the Coordinadora Ecoloxista n’ Asturias, regrets this, emphasizing that the administration of the Principality only seeks to favor the pulp industry, which in the region functions as a monopoly, and that the Asturian government ” has little personality for change.”
To the environmental disaster that the massive cultivation of eucalyptus represents for ecologists, has been added in recent years the climate crisis, a perfect cocktail which will lead us, if no remedy is found, to a very dangerous environmental crisis. “The current forestry design is not sustainable,” explains Pedro, but the resulting economic profitability “more compensates them than changing it.”
Asturias has more than 200 km of coastline populated with eucalyptus (Globular eucalyptus) and prepares to enter the Eucalyptus nitenseven if initially it is only authorized to replace the first and not as a new crop, it will end up assuming, according to Zamora, that in a few years not only the Asturian coast will be populated with eucalyptus, but also the chain of mountains.
The Coordinator has been fighting for more than 40 years against the cultivation of eucalyptus in Asturias and denounces the consequences this has on biodiversity and the environment. Today, they warn that the disappearance of agricultural land in favor of forestry to plant masses of eucalyptus trees is truly alarming.
Even its detractors recognize that its existence is necessary, but controlled and not massified; in no case in monoculture and limiting it to marginal lands; a tendency to use other types of indigenous crops to make paper pulp; and even with the taxation, through taxes, of the forest industry for the negative consequences derived from this species.
