Mixed Cork Oak-Stone Pine Woodlands in the Alentejo Region of Portugal

Abstract

In this chapter we present an economic study of a mixed cork oak–stone pine woodland maintained on a private estate in the Alentejo region of southern Portugal. We analyze costs and benefits to the owner and private income distribution for the woodland owner and his employees. The goal is to determine whether total profitability for landowners is competitive, as compared with alternative nonland investments of similar risk and time horizon frames, given the prevailing management practices of nonmechanical harvesting of cork and pine nuts and chronic overgrazing by domestic livestock, which prevent regeneration of cork oak. In addition, we ask whether the conservation of the mixed woodland is important enough for society and government to underwrite their conservation. The last section of the chapter is devoted to this question and addresses issues that will also be raised in the next two chapters and are central to the book as a whole.