From the beginning of the 20th century there was a great interest in the supposed need to plant trees in Cíes (with an aesthetic and forestal purposes), a place where there were some bushes, pastures, little forests, willows, blackthorns, elder trees, laurel and Pyrenean oaks. They are usually linked to damp places or streams.
Trees weren´t planted until the forties and from 1952 there was a massive crop plantation in the three archipelagos. Exotic, invading and foreign species (Australian blackwood, eucaliptus and pines) started to replace other ecosystems. The native flora was replaced and the soil was impoverished even drying the wet areas, fountains and streams which Cíes used to have in great numbers but not anymore. The drought is emphasized in summer due to the little rain and high temeperatures. Fresh water in Cíes is in short supply these days meanwhile in the old days it was relatively abundant.
The crops of foreign species were never productive and they only shaded. It´s a mass of very thick trees with little biodiversity. Today, these invading species are being extinguished slowly reducing the numbers of trees and trying not to erode the land.
Moreover, these crops made the population leave the islands earlier than expected. They saw that all their pastures, crops and streams were reduced the landscape was changing.
