Forests4Water Brazil: Community Climate Action

Hello, dear donors,

And greetings from Iracambi in the Brazilian rainforest where I want to give you the lowdown on what's involved in tree planting.

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Luiza, and I'm one of the intrepid band of tree planting volunteers at Iracambi. We are well into planting the first 1500 tree seedlings of this season. And since our goal is 20,000 before the end of this year and another 35,000 in 2022, there´s no time to waste! The rains arrived around ten days ago, and it's been raining steadily ever since - which is great for baby trees, even if it does mean muddy boots for tree planters.

So you may be wondering how I ended up at the end of a dirt road from nowhere, planting trees with the Iracambi team. All I can say is that I've always been fascinated by forests. I was raised on the outskirts of São Paulo city, and even though it's an urban area, my part of town was really close to the Serra do Mar State Park, which is a huge area of Atlantic Rainforest (315,000 hectares.) Both my parents were biologists, so I guess that had something to do with my decision to study biology...

So, when I heard that Iracambi was looking for volunteers to help out with the tree planting program, I knew this was where I should be. And now for a quick overview of a day in the life of a tree planter.

6.30 am and it´s been raining steadily all night. I jump out of bed, pull on my jeans and boots and head for the kitchen. It's coffee time. (It's always coffee time in Brazil, but there´s something special about the first cup of the day.) I join my fellow team members and we pile into the Land Rover and head up to today´s planting site. The tree seedlings have already been delivered, the holes have been dug, and now all we need to do is get those trees into the ground.

We'll be working in several different areas, and the mixture of tree species has already been decided, in accordance with the soils, the topography and the existing vegetation. One area is on a steep mountain slope above a spring, and here's where we´ll be planting in the water catchment area, to increase the vegetation cover and prevent runoff from the rains. Other areas are under partly regenerating forest cover, and here we´ll focus on species that are tolerant to shade. In each area we´ll plant a mixture of fast growing pioneer species and slower growing succession and climax species, and, since Iracambi has already been reforesting this plot for the past couple of years, we'll also check out the progress of the trees we planted in 2020 and 2019.

It rains steadily all day, but somehow I don't mind. I love to feel the rain on my face, and I love to think how happy the young trees must be. I love to visualize the new forest growing and flourishing, and I´m happy to be getting my hands dirty as I work. 

But, as the afternoon wears on, I´m also dreaming of a hot shower and some clean clothes and a good dinner..... 

And tomorrow I´ll be ready to go out again. I can´t think of anything I'd rather be doing!

And on behalf of my fellow tree planters, we'd like to send a big thank you for supporting our program.  Thanks to you, we´re getting it done. 

with love from Luiza and the Iracambi tree planting team

PS I forgot to say I`ve just been accepted into a graduate program in the local federal university. Ít's only one hour away from Iracambi, so I´ll be able to keep an eye on those trees I planted

Good morning, dear donors,

And we hope you are all doing well?

We have a ton of news for you in this letter. First of all, the rains have come. Thunder, lightning strikes, muddy roads, deafening choruses of frogs and bugs AND ….

Time to get planting.

Our new forestry coordinator Luiz has his first day on the job today. Talk about hitting the ground running. Luckily he has the rest of the team to help him get oriented, and, lucky for us, he is already familiar with the area. In fact, he owns a plot of land adjacent to the forest corridor that we have been constructing for some years, and he is keen to reforest some of his land.  And of course he comes with years of experience in forest restoration, so there'll be plenty of learnings all round.

Another stroke of luck was the fact that we managed last week to get a tractor to make an access trail into the Graminha Mountain Reserve which is the plot of land that Iracambi acquired this year for reforestation. Parts of it are so steep as to be almost inaccessible for even the stoutest four-wheel drive vehicle. Snagging a tractor may not sound like a big deal to you, but tractors are few and far between in this neck of the woods, and, once the rains have set in, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to work on the steep slopes. So we are extremely happy on that front also!

Great news, too, on the large-scale Mantiqueira Forest Restoration Program of which we now officially a part. We’ll tell you more in our next report when we have hammered out the details. But one of the most promising aspects of the program is that the carbon certification will be carried out by the program as a whole, which is going to save us a LOT of time and energy and money, and leave us free to get those trees into the ground.

Another piece of good news is that increasing numbers of businesses are becoming interested in reducing their carbon footprint and many of them are looking into supporting nature-based solutions. Like planting trees.

That’s good news for the planet. And it’s good news – and a lot of work – for us! Thank you so much, dear donors for your support. We’re on the case!

With love and renewed thanks from the Iracambi Forestry Team