By Dan Bammes
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kuer/local-kuer-942277.mp3
Salt Lake City, UT – It was about 300 years ago that European wine makers began using cork to seal their bottles. Since then, most of the world's cork has come from Portugal, where the cork oak grows in a savannah landscape where farmers have been grazing animals for centuries. It's been a stable ecosystem, but it's changed in recent years. Fewer animals are grazing beneath the oak trees, and the world demand for cork has been dropping as winemakers turn to screw-top bottles and other methods of packaging their products.
That's given ecologist Ron Ryel the opportunity to study the changes in that system in detail with the help of a grant from the Fulbright Foundation. He's an associate professor with the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University. Ryel works with a team led by the Forest Research Center of the Technical University of Lisbon.