The Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development, Luis Capoulas Santos, announced significant changes in the management of Portugal’s forgotten hectares, many of which are planted with eucalyptus trees.
"Today is a historic day for the Portuguese forest," Santos announced on Oct 27, after an extraordinary Council of Ministers ministers meeting where it was agreed that a land bank be established to take over land that genuinely belonged to nobody and land with no owner as yet registered.
This new land bank will merge existing State-owned land with private land that has no recognised owner, “a profound reform,” said the minister where the idea is to reduce fire risk by reducing the number of eucalyptus forests and to halt the advance of invasive species.
The management of this new land bank will be entrusted to the Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DGADR), said Santos, who envisaged that the whole country "soon would be covered by new forest management rules to ensure professional management of this natural resource.”
Better still, within a year, any forested areas with no known owner will be integrated with the Municipal Master Plan (PDM) of each council, thus keeping control localised.
The Government at last id acting to stop the expansion of eucalyptus plantations in Portugal where around 900,000 hectares are planted with this thirsty foreign species, many forests being on land that nobody appears to own.
There will be a public debate between November 7 and January 31, and the 'land bank' plan then will be submitted to Parliament for any changes and final approval.
"We want this plan to generate the maximum national consensus," said Santos who said the land bank rules will include free registration of unregistered land by existing owners up to the end of 2018 and land without a recognised owner may be claimed back within 15 years after which it becomes State property.
As for money to run the land bank, this will come from selling or leasing unregistered land as part of the government's emphasis on rural development and job creation.
