The Renature Monchique project is set to reach a cumulative total of 600,000 trees planted by the end of February in areas of the Algarve’s Monchique mountains affected by the devastating 2018 wildfires, the project’s coordinator has revealed.
Launched in 2019, the initiative is led by the Group for Territorial Planning and Environment Studies (GEOTA) and has already aided in the planting of 580,000 native trees across 1,850 hectares of the Monchique range over the past seven years. The project is funded through the carbon emissions offsetting scheme of British airline Ryanair.
To date, Renature Monchique has involved more than 80 landowners and public-sector partners in the environmental recovery of the area scorched by the 2018 fires, some of the the worst in the Algarve’s recorded history.
“We have supported more than 80 landowners and have already planted 580,000 trees. We are now on track to reach 600,000 by next February,” said Miguel Jerónimo, GEOTA’s project coordinator.
Speaking to journalists yesterday at the end of a press conference in Monchique marking the launch of a new phase of the project, Jerónimo stressed that Renature Monchique “goes beyond environmental recovery” after the fires, positioning itself also as “a project of social and economic regeneration, in a territory where land ownership is largely private”.
“When these fires occur, it is real people who are affected. We need to do things differently to prevent, in the future, fires that burn 27,000 hectares,” he said, underlining the importance of sustained, long-term work to regenerate the municipality’s woodland.
According to Jerónimo, the project is not being carried out in isolation, but in partnership with Monchique Municipal Council, the Algarve Tourism Board, and the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF).
“Ryanair’s funding has already reached €2.2 million, which is significant, and our aim is to continue. The regeneration of these burned areas is a 20-year-scale intervention, so we hope to carry on this ecological restoration for many more years,” he added.
The initiative focuses on protecting the ecosystem through the planting of native species, while aligning this approach with local economic activities linked to the mountains, “providing income opportunities for local communities”, he said.
For his part, Monchique mayor Paulo Alves highlighted the importance of a project that “has already left a clear mark on the municipality, through its territorial reach, the support it gives to landowners, and its intervention in abandoned land with previously no economic value”.
According to the mayor, reforestation with native species such as the Monchique oak and the Arbutus unedo (commonly known as the madrone, medronheiro, or ‘strawberry tree’) represents “added value for landowners”.
Meanwhile, the president of the Algarve Tourism Board, André Gomes, pointed to the “importance of a project that is genuinely concerned with restoring the area’s ecology, based on close cooperation with landowners”.
“It is an excellent example of how public and private partners, regional bodies, municipalities, and companies can work together to regenerate our territory. This is particularly important for the work we do at Algarve Tourism, especially in terms of diversifying tourism segments and reinforcing the idea that the Algarve is a year-round destination,” he concluded.
Source: LUSA
