The City of Lisbon is the capital of Portugal and has inside a periurban park, the Monsanto Forest Park with the area of 1000 ha.
The park began to be installed in 1936 and features a great diversity of forest species and ecosystems that have been managed with specific objectives, which were to be altered according to the circumstances. The goal was initially setup with the use of forest pioneer species, after about 25 years the changes induced by natural regeneration and competition between forest species determined a management process oriented to creating autochthonous forests along with measures to control exotic invasive species.
These measures of forest management were always framed with the recreational and educational forest uses.
Currently the Monsanto Forest Park has a high biodiversity in terms of flora and fauna and has a corps of technicians with high experience in forestry measures and techniques applied. Τhe control of forest fires, the removal of exotic invasive species and the methods of speeding up the process of natural succession with the objectives of creating as quickly as possible structures near the climax forest are the most important objectives for Lisbon’s Municipality to be applied in his only suburban park.