Cork protects wildlife.

Cork is not only useful when popping the bubbly, it also saves wildlife. The bark of cork oak trees regenerates, allowing the trees to be safely stripped in nine-year intervals to create natural wine corks. Because the trees are valued for this service and not logged, an ancient woodland ecosystem based on native flora has developed within the woodlands in Portugal.

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These "Montados," as the woodlands are called, feed grazing livestock and also nurture rare wildlife, reports Britain's Royal Society of Protection of Birds. By 2000, one oak thought to be 212 years old and named the "Whistler Tree" swarmed with singing birds. It alone has been responsible for the production of a million corks.

With more than 60 plant species found in as little as three square feet, the forest beckons numerous plant and butterfly species. The black stork, black vulture, and endangered Spanish imperial eagle, of which only 130 pairs remain worldwide, are among the 42 species of birds that depend on the cork woodlands. Migrating from northern Europe to the Iberian Peninsula's cork forests are blackcaps, finches, robins, and song thrushes.

The Ilberian lynx, considered one of the world's rarest animals, seeks refuge within cork woodlands. There are fewer than 1,200 of the spotted gray cats remaining and only 300-350 of those are breeding females. More than half the world's cork oak woodlands are found in Spain and Portugal, which produce three-quarters of the world's cork.