Eucalypt trees have a very bad image, and for a good reason. Throughout whole Portugal this Australian tree is grown in monocultures in vast areas to produce paper. This is one of the main export products of Portugal.
Since the Eucalypt globalis is used to way more difficult circumstances in Australia, it loves the circumstances here in Southern Portugal, which makes it reproduce like crazy. Unfortunately it prevents other -native- species from growing. On top of that, these monocultures of Eucalypt increase the already high chances of bushfires. The essential oils in the this tree make that it can explode once lit on fire.

Like all plants and trees, they can be our friend though, as long as we use them for the right reasons. Eucalypt grows very fast, and by doing so, produces a lot of biomass. We can use this quality to regenerate the land. Pruning this tree heavily gives us big amounts of biomass that we can use to protect the soil. As long as we don't let this tree dominate the landscape but use only a couple of them to feed our forest system we can develop a great collaboration with this infamous powertree.

We put the big branches on contour to break the flow of water when it rains. We made the smaller branches into small pieces to cover the soil. We can keep on harvesting from these trees as they tend to shoot back. We have to prevent them from dominating the area, so we only keep a couple of them. These will also give some necessary shade in this project area.