Signs of Life from Millenary Olive Tree Burned in Sardinian Wildfires

The thou­sand-year-old wild olive tree of Sa Tanca Manna in Cuglieri, which was affected by last summer’s fires in west Sardinia, is reviv­ing: three vig­or­ous shoots have sprung out from its stump.

After the gen­eral dis­may caused by the dam­age done to the mil­lenary olive tree, which stood 16.5 meters tall with a cir­cum­fer­ence of 10 meters before the dis­as­ter, this event gave every­one new hope.

“The new sprouts are a sign that the plant is not dead, and we can look for­ward con­fi­dently to a full recov­ery,” Pietro Paolo Arca, the pres­i­dent of the Montiferru Association, told Olive Oil Times.

The ancient tree’s resur­gence was made pos­si­ble by the work of the association’s vol­un­teers and botanists from the University of Cagliari and the University of Sassari.

“In the after­math of the fire, we decided to team up to sup­port farm­ers and insti­tu­tions,” Arca said. ​“We aimed to regen­er­ate the ter­ri­tory, recover the destroyed olive trees and raise pub­lic aware­ness of the impor­tance of imme­di­ately tak­ing action to quickly restore the pro­duc­tion fab­ric of the area, to pre­vent the loss of years of pro­duc­tiv­ity and jobs.”

The group of vol­un­teers called upon other asso­ci­a­tions and pri­vate com­pa­nies, which responded warmly and made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to sup­ply­ing seedlings to bring the olive and for­est resources of the affected area back to life.

After send­ing a for­mal request to the munic­i­pal­ity of Cuglieri, the Montiferru Association obtained per­mis­sion to help the local insti­tu­tions man­age the site of the mil­lenary oleaster. Then, fol­low­ing the experts’ rec­om­men­da­tions, they started imple­ment­ing a series of mea­sures to restore the plan­t’s vital­ity.

“Upon the rem­nants of the tree, we placed a sun-shad­ing cloth, namely a cov­er­ing struc­ture built from scaf­fold­ing tubes aim­ing at replac­ing the foliage that was destroyed,” Arca said.

This arrange­ment, in con­junc­tion with a layer of straw mulch, allowed them to lower the tem­per­a­tures of the soil and the stump, which had reached 90 °C, and bring them back to nor­mal. They also set up a drip irri­ga­tion sys­tem.

“The researchers from the University of Cagliari found that pho­to­syn­thetic activ­ity was still tak­ing place in some por­tions of the stump,” Arca said. ​“This meant that the plant was not dead. It was a true relief.”

“Therefore, we planned the irri­ga­tion every one or two days in those points where the plant was still vital,” he added. ​“And finally, one day of April, dur­ing the Easter hol­i­days, we found the shoots just sprouted from the base.”

They waited some time to com­mu­ni­cate the news until the twigs had suf­fi­ciently strength­ened.

“The mil­len­nial struc­ture has obvi­ously been lost,” Arca said. ​“Yet it is being reborn, and it is a source of real pride for us to have con­tributed to the recov­ery of this liv­ing mon­u­ment.”

“The credit goes to the many vol­un­teers who col­lab­o­rated with the 84 mem­bers of our asso­ci­a­tion,” he added. ​“Still, we can say that the force of nature won over the fool­ish­ness of humankind.”

Although it is impos­si­ble to irri­gate the entire area affected, the asso­ci­a­tion is work­ing to recover all the olive trees impacted by the fire.

Between 60 and 70 per­cent of the sec­u­lar plants have responded well and have new sprouts on the trunk or stump. The hope is that a large num­ber of them will recover within three to four years.

“In this case, the risk is the aban­don­ment of the land affected, which is a threat not only for the local econ­omy but also for the pro­tec­tion of the land­scape,” Arca said. ​“Instead, this recov­ery gives us all renewed con­fi­dence.”

On July 23, one year after the wild­fire, the Montiferru Association will hold a pub­lic event to dis­cuss the restora­tion of the mil­lenary tree and urge local stake­hold­ers to take the nec­es­sary actions to pre­vent future wild­fires, which are fore­cast to become more severe as a result of cli­mate change.

“We think that most of the time, these dis­as­ters can be avoided,” Arca said. ​“There is a gen­eral ten­dency, in all sec­tors, to make sav­ings in safety. Instead, it costs much less to invest in pre­ven­tion than to repair the dam­age and imple­ment reme­dial actions after­ward. All this should be a warn­ing and a les­son for today’s and tomorrow’s gen­er­a­tions.”