In Lousada, Portugal, not all trees are “just trees.” Everyone now knows that the ones too large to be completely hugged by a single person are “Gigantes Verdes”, and they cannot be cut down.
These ancient trees, valuable to everyone —even if we often don’t notice it— are capable of capturing in one year the same amount of CO₂ that a regular tree captures in its first 15 years of life. That’s why, according to João Gonçalo Soutinho, founder of the VERDE association, preserving existing trees is more important than planting new ones.
For our last episode of the “Off the Trail” series, we travelled to Lousada, to see the project and its supporters with our own eyes.
