Put a Cork in it!!

Golf courses purchase and go through a large volume of wine in the course of a year. Who would have thought that your purchasing decisions, regarding wine...more particularly what type of stopper is in the bottle would be important to biological diversity?? Read on:

Ana I. Leal and colleagues from the University of Lisbon recently reported on a study that they finished in 2008 concerning the importance of cork forests from a biological diversity and economic point of view.

One of the significant findings concluded that the plastic bottle stopper in that merlot that you enjoy may be threatening the biological diversity of the Mediterranean region. In Portugal those cork oak agricultural regions are called “montados” and in Spain they are called “dehesas.” Whatever they are called, the agricultural grasslands, dotted with cork oak and holm oak produce much of the fibrous bark that keeps fine wines from spilling and spoiling.

The centuries-old traditional cork-makers take long strips from the oaks every nine years, starting when the trees are about 25 years old. The bark regenerates during this time period. These cork oak forests do more than just provide jobs for nearly 1,000 people, they are very important for Mediterranean birds.

Exactly how debarking influences bird biodiversity, however, hasn’t been carefully studied. In their study, Leal and her colleague’s surveyed birds and arthropods at a large cork forest in Portugal. In particular, they examined how bird abundance and density differed between trees that had recently been stripped and those that had up to nine years to recover. The study noted that the differences between recently stripped trees and those that had time to recover was not significantly different as far as bird biodiversity was concerned. But, they also noted that no matter what the age or use class of the cork oak forest, this habitat was preferable to nearly every other land use type in the study region.

The real threat, they wrote in the study is, “The growing competition between cork stoppers and synthetic stoppers.” Wine experts say plastic corks and screw tops now seal 30 percent of the world’s wine bottles. That means bottlers aren’t buying billions of real corks. And…”Without the high income resulting from the production of cork stoppers, montados may lose their economic viability,” the study warns. This may result in its replacement by other types of land cover, much less valuable for birds and other components of biodiversity.

So…the next time you buy a bottle of wine…make sure to put a cork in it!!