Montados Alentejo, Portugal.

The landscape of cork oak forest.

A magnificent 200 year old cork oak, able to thrive on the poorest mediteranean soils. Thousands of years ago people learnt to harvest their spongy bark for a uniquely versatile material. Cork. They also began to graze the land between the trees and to grow a few other crops.

Forests of these cork oaks survive to this day in a few parts of Europe and with them an astonishing variety of plant and animal life. Cork woodland is especially rich in birdlife with more than a hundred different species breeding here in southern portugal. They include some of Europes rarest birds which still find sanctuary among these remarkable trees.

The bark of the cork oak is stripped away every nine years. Its sold for many different uses from floor tiles to fishing floats. But the greatest revenue comes from the billions of stoppers we use each year to close our wine and champagne bottles. Its because of the high value of cork bark that this ancient landscape with its rural culture and its wildlife has been protected until today. But it's future is by no means certain. If the metal screw caps and plastic were to completely replace natural cork to stop our wine bottles then a drastic change could be on the way because land owners would have to replace their oak woodlands with other more conventional crops.

So what is it about these Montados forests that make them so valuable to people and wildlife? The Alentejo region of Southern Portugal stretches from Lisbon in the west to the hills of the Spanish border in the east. Its about ten thousand square miles or the size of Wales and it the worlds most important cork growing area. These woodlands of evergreen cork oak from their close relative the holm oak are known in Portugal as the Montados. Although the montados is so good for wildlife it's by no means a wilderness but rather a natural ecosystem of woodleand and pasture which has been sympathetically adapted for farming in a sustainable way for more than a thousand years. Typically the pastures under the trees are grazed and where there are patches of better quality soil land owners have tradiitionally grown citrus vines and olives. This has created a rich mosaic of habitats which is as beneficial for wildlife as it is for the farmers. Nevertheless to make a living based mainly on cork each family needs well over a thousand acres where the oaks can thrive despite the dry poor quality soil.

Many farmers in Alentejo have families who have managed a large area of Montados forest in a traditional way for many generations. Apart from an intimate knowledge of his own cork woodland some have a passion for the future survival of the Portuguese montados including its spectacular wildlife.

Although the ancient Greeks and romans knew about the value of cork bark it only began to be harvested commercially in Portugal about three hundred years ago. Its still done by teams of men using hand axes and no viable mechanical method has yet been invented to do the job as effectively.

The stripping is only done in summer when the bark comes away from the living tissue, the cambium more easily. The skills needed to harvest cork are often handed down from father to son. The harvset is sustainable because every nine years you peelit and you don't destroy the tree. The more you peel it the better the cork is. Cork oaks are the only tree in the world in which you could strip an entire piece of bark like this without killing it. Every tree this size yields sufficient bark to produce 4000 corks and this harvest provides employment for at least 60,000 Portuguese workers. Each tree is daubed with a numbers to record the year of the harvest. this will remain visible as the bark thickens from the inside reminding owners that this tree can next be harvseted in 2016.

During the hottest part of the day the cork harvesters are not the only ones to welcome a break. A pair of booted eagles have have nested nearby and the male has been waiting patiently for the human activity to quieten down before delivering food to his mate.....