The vast area of forest managed by the Portucel Soporcel group hosts multiple and diversified forms of life. Approximately 48% of the more than 100 thousand hectares of forest recently certified under the FSC – international standard were classified as High Conservation Value Areas at landscape level within the partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature 
(WWF) due to the diversity, abundance and interaction between species and ecosystems found in these areas.
Special care is required to manage and preserve the habitats and species that exist in the Group’s forests. In particular, the Group is engaged in a LIFE-Nature project for the conservation of the Bonelli’s Eagle , a species threatened with extinction in Portugal.
The Company views the defence of biodiversity as the key to environmentally responsible production and sustainable forest management, and in fact as the guarantee of its future activity. The Group has taken a pioneer role within the international initiatives aimed at halting biodiversity loss in the planet by 2010, having subscribed the Countdown 2010 goals assumed by the Heads of State of various countries. Within the scope of this European goal, the Group also signed several protocols, undertaken to meet specific objectives to control the activity’s impacts and to extend this strategy to employees, business partners and wood suppliers. The principles underlying these commitments are set out in the Biodiversity Statement issued by the Group at management level.
A commitment to biodiversity has always been natural to the Group, as well as a main concern of the its management. A clear example of the Group’s active policy towards the conservation of natural values and multiple land use is given by the excellent wine produced at Herdade de Espirra , or the collection of eucalyptus species – the largest in Portugal – and other rare species grown at the Quinta de São Francisco’s arboretum .
»
World Wide Fund for Nature 
Documents
