This is the second piece in a series exploring cork from designer and educator Daniel Michalik. As a prelude to this series, Michalik produced a beautiful photo gallery documenting the cork harvest.
One morning in mid-July, I drove out to the cork forest of southeastern Portugal with Joana Mesquita and Raquel Castro of Corticeira Amorim (the world's leading producer of cork stoppers) looking for cortiçadores: the men and women that spend three months a year stripping bark from cork oak trees. What I found was an industry unlike any other—one that is predicated on environmental and cultural stewardship as a means to economic success. A natural resource that grows more robust and healthy with regular and responsible development.
Portugal is the world's single largest supplier of cork, producing over 53% of all exports of cork stoppers and related products. This small country boasts almost 1 million hectares of cork forest. Of these, many are wild, natural forests like the ones I have visited. It is estimated that Portugal's cork forests absorb 14 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. A cork oak is harvested every 9 years, and the forests are on yearly, rotating harvest cycles. While one area is harvested, the others are left alone to grow.
Cork trees as seen from a balloon over the Alentejo region of Portugal, near the town of Beja, 2 hours SE of Lisbon.
Trees damaged by human hands will not produce profitable raw material, so a unique model of natural material sourcing has developed in which profitable extraction leads to numerous environmental improvements. Forest protection (and protection of related habitats) is the key to maximizing the profitability of the yearly cork harvest. It is estimated that dozens of species would be extinct were it not for the cork forest, including the Iberian Lynx and Imperial Eagle. The concentration of biodiversity within the European cork forest makes it one of the world's best models of wildlife conservation.
Trunk showing inner bark that carried nutrients, with two consecutive harvest cycles, spanning 18 years. The inner bark is kept from damage during harvest, as healthier trees make for more profitable forests (and better environmental conditions overall).
The cork forest, or montado, is a hot, dry place in the summer. Daily temperatures easily run past 35 °C (95 °F) and the dust and flies are incessant. Still, between May and August the cortiçadores work from dawn to dusk at a brisk, almost manic pace. Speed is key because at any other time of year the bark grips fast to the trunk, making any harvest impossible.
We followed the farm manager into the forest, parked our suffering Peugeot in a dusty lot, and climbed into a tiny work van that bumped along impossibly twisted dirt paths, through unforgivingly thick brush, followed by a hike through the brambles to a ridge overlooking the montado. All around us were the cork trees in various stages of being denuded.
We found roughly 30 men working in teams of 2-3 to harvest a dozen or so trees in the area. Some balanced like tightrope walkers on narrow branches, effortlessly swinging their razor-sharp axes and flipping tubes of bark off the branches. Others worked around the main trunks, swinging as high above their heads as possible. They removed 5-meter long sections of cork in a single piece. The bark from an entire tree trunk would be removed in two sections; an entire tree could be stripped in 15 minutes.
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