Eucalyptus and soil depletion: quite a bit of a myth

Proper Eucalyptus crop management = Proper soil management

Gustavo Iglesias Trabado
GIT Forestry Consulting - Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal - www.git-forestry.com - EUCALYPTOLOGICS

One of the factors that have been used and abused for the demonisation of Eucalyptus trees is "their ability to deplete soils, so nothing can grow where eucalypts once grew". A myth very in the same line of the "nothing grows under gum trees" one. Pretty surely those propagating these ideas and those giving credit to the previous have never been to the natural habitat of these trees in Australia, whose rich agricultural and livestock production happens each day mainly on previously cleared land once covered with eucalypt forests. And quite possibly myth believers have never been into an eucalypt plantation either.

What is sure is that Eucalyptus can perfectly be grown under sustainable forestry principles, and that knowing your soils and your plants before taking opinion is very important. Soil management under sustainability philosophies relies basically on the simple principle of "what you get out of it should come back". Return nutrients that you extract, or at least try to minimise nutrient losses. Keep the balance. Think long term too.

Here you have an example. Water, light and soil nutrients transformed into timber grown in short rotations. Timber extraction, but return of nutrients stored in bark, leaves and branches to the soil. Appropriate fertilisation to cover the minimum losses caused by water, cellulose and lignin storage in timber and to aid a next generation of trees to establish well. Et voilà! Healthy soil, and more fast growing timber.

Generalizing on the interaction of plant crops and soil is never wise. There are many types of soil, and many types of plants. Generalizing on the interaction of Eucalyptus and soils keeps being temerary, since there are several hundred species of the former and many dozen common types of the later. Generalizing on the interaction of a forestry production scheme with soil or other pieces of the ecosystem in which it is established is the equivalent of gossip.

The first persons interested in sustainability of tree farms (be them Eucalyptus based or not) by the implementation of good management practices are investors in such ventures, foresters in care of them and forestry engineers designing them. All in all, we have been following the same philosophy for some two hundred years of forestry science. And we may mistake, but surely learn from it. Some myth propagators apparently don't.

So, if earlier we took a trip from "nothing grows under eucalypts" to "nothing would grow without eucalypts", now we have taken one from "nothing grows where eucalypts once grew" to "crops keep growing where eucalypts once grew". Ironies of tree mythology.

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© 2007 Gustavo Iglesias Trabado. Please contact us if you want to use all or part of this text and photography elsewhere. We like to share, but we do not like rudeness.