A cork

Put a cork in it

NEXT TIME you open a bottle of French champagne or Spanish rioja, pay a little more attention to the cork. That inconsequential-looking bottle stopper may be key to the survival of one of the richest wildlife habitats in Europe. Called dehesa in Spain and montado in Portugal, it stretches over roughly 13,000 square miles of undulating land in western Spain and eastern Portugal. Bread-oven hot in midsummer, ice cold in winter, the habitat is a patchwork of evergreen holm oaks and cork oaks, which grow on flower-speckled summertime grasslands dotted with aromatic shrubs and a sprinkling of cultivated cereals. A bit like the savanna of central Africa, each acre of dehesa supports from 15 to 50 trees and a host of flowering plants, insects and birds.

Cork oaks, the thick bark of which is harmlessly stripped off every decade for cork production, are the economic backbone of the dehesa. No fewer than 13 billion cork bottle stoppers are used worldwide every year, the majority made from Spanish and Portuguese cork. But these days, the traditional use of cork for stoppering wine bottles is under threat from growing use, particularly by New World vintners, of plastic “corks” and screw caps. If these gain a substantial market share, scientists say, the dehesa-montado habitat could be doomed.

This seems to be one time when using the natural wood is best for the habitat. Read the rest.