Climate Action Brazil Project #22098

Forests4Water Brazil: Community Climate Action

by Iracambi

Forests4Water Brazil: Community Climate Action

Project Report | Sep 15, 2020
Forests 4 Water reinventing itself

By Arielle Canedo | Project Leader

Local volunteers helping in the nursery

Dear Forest Guardians

How are you doing?

Here in the forest, we’re still in partial lockdown on account of covid19.

And since we have no volunteers (who are always a HUGE help,) and haven’t had any since March, we’re seriously short of helping hands. Which means that everything is affected: our forest restoration program, our forest nursery, our site maintenance, and gardening, and our farm visits.

But the Iracambi team is back working in person - observing strict safety protocols, of course. And now is the moment to reinvent our programs and keep going.

So let’s give you the good news from this quarter since behind every crisis there’s an opportunity and doors are always opening. It’s a good moment for reflection and finding some inner peace, right?

Planting

After a cold snap that froze our fingers and toes, it’s now boiling hot. Could that be anything to do with climate change? That’s a long conversation for another time….

But I’m really happy to report that, after a long period of rural exodus, our mountain community is growing again. Young people are buying land round here and the cool thing is that they all have great plans; reforestry, agroecology, and working together.

This year we’re aiming to plant 4500-5000 native species seedlings and, in this rural community of Graminha, we already have a list of people wanting to help us with the planting: Carla, Leandro, Luiz, Bruno, Everaldo, and more. Maybe we’ll be able to plant a new forest corridor?

And now for a newsflash. This is likely to be the last time you’ll hear directly from me, Arielle. I was recently promoted to the post of Project Coordinator and we’ve hired a new forestry coordinator: Alfredo. Maybe some of you already know him – he was born and raised here in Graminha. He knows everyone, he’s a good communicator, and we’re training him up on the job. We decided to hire someone from the community (like me, I was born in Rosário da Limeira) and I feel that the fact that I’m from the local community helps a lot when looking for people to help with the planting. Since it’s a community project, what better than having a community member running it?

But don’t worry, you’ll still see me in the photos and taking part in the activities!

This month of September, Alfredo, Deivid, and I will start visiting the farms (we’ll be wearing our masks and socially distancing, and sadly the usual coffee and chatting will have to wait until the pandemic is over!)

Forest nursery

We recently started having a handful of volunteers from the local community on Thursdays to help in the nursery. And this has been a great help since there is so much to do, weeding, filling bags for the seedlings, walking the forest trails to collect seeds, planting seeds – as you know there’s plenty of work and it’s all delightful in the fresh air!

We’ve also been sprucing up the nursery, the water tank was about to fall down so Deivid worked with builder Milton to fix it. We also mowed the grass and the place looks wonderful. Over the past weeks, we collected seeds from ten different species, avocado, papaya, custard apple, and others, dug a lot of earth for filling the bags, carried on composting, germinated the seeds, made 2000 seedlings, kept up the watering (every second day) cleared out the weeds, and made a list of all the seedlings ready for the planting season.

And we also managed to keep up with the monitoring. We keep in touch with the farmers to see how they are doing, whether they need anything, and we ask them to send us photos of the areas they reforested – so that we can ensure they are looking after the trees! But we’re longing to return to our normal activities, and see the survival rate, which species adapt best, how the seedlings are growing, whether they are being attacked by ants, and so on. Check out the photos they sent. (And please forgive the quality of the photos – that depends on the farmers’ level of skill!)

And so, dear donors, we want to thank you once again for your support. As you know, we couldn’t do it without you. The rainforest thanks you! And we’re now sending out a brand new monthly newsletter. Check our latest edition, and please sign up by clicking here.

And we wish you all good health and lots of courage,

Much love,

Arielle and the Iracambi team

Seeds collected

Monitoring at Mr. Wilson

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Jun 16, 2020
Forests4Water in Lockdown

By Arielle | Project Coordinator

Margot monitoring a young tree

Dear Forest Guardians

How are you doing?

With this covid we are all in some sort of lockdown, right? We at Iracambi have been in total lockdown since the end of March. (But the rainforest is a great place to be locked down in!)

And work doesn’t stop. We had a lot of rain during planting season, remember? What we need to do now is check on how all the baby trees are doing, and whether they are being well cared for by the farmers. We need to check on the survival rates, figure out which species are adapting best, and ensure that the baby trees are being weeded and protected from ant attacks.

We did our last monitoring with our students shortly before lockdown. It’s hard work, but the students love it, and they love meeting the farmers and, after the day’s work, drinking delicious coffee, eating cornbread and jumping into the nearest waterfall. It’s a great experience for everyone, farmers and students alike, and of course it’s so gratifying to see the trees growing and bare fields turning into young forests. Not forgetting seeing springs running clearer and stronger than ever.

Then came lockdown.

How to check on our trees? We decided to ask the farmers to do the monitoring themselves. Send us pictures, share any problems with us, keep us in touch. Of course we don’t get as much information as if we were going there, but ít turns out to be a very good strategy. Sometimes they ask us to wait a week, so that they’ll have a chance to do the weeding!

So this form of monitoring is pretty successful, and we’ll certainly incorporate it in future planting seasons. Although there’s nothing like a personal visit, once in a while.

In the meantime, work in the nursery doesn’t stop. Seeds need to be collected, sorted and planted. Seedlings transplanted into plastic sacks, compost made, seed tables maintained, and of course there’s the watering. That takes two hours with two people, every other day.

This quarter we’ve collected seeds from 20 species and planted them, watered them, weeded them and loved them, so rainforest lockdown is never dull!

And one more thing.

You probably know that we work hard with the local community on environmental policy issues. One of these is connected with preserving our high biodiversity forest areas from mining. We’ve set up a facebook page and an online petition, and we’re excited that more and more people are determined to protect the forests that you, dear supporters, are helping to restore.

Well, I reckon I’ve brought you up to date. This was an unusual quarter, but, like so many of us we’ve learned to adjust! And we couldn’t do it without you. Thank you all!

We wish you all health and courage to keep going as we get through these hard times together.

with love,

Arielle and the Iracambi team

Emily monitoring a young tree

Self monitoring on Roselene's farm

Upgraded composting area at the nursery

Inga seeds from the forest

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Feb 18, 2020
A LOT of water in the Forest!

By Arielle Canedo | Project Coordinator

Well, lovely donors,

You're not going to believe this but I had jjust finished writing this quarterly report to you when some gremlin got into the site or my fingers or somewhere and seized up the site and my report VANISHED into thin air!

But down in the forest we are made of stern stuff, so here it comes again.

And the main thing we want to do is give you guys a big shoutout for your amazing support over the last quarter, which has averaged almost $500 a month. You are the best!

You support comes at the perfect moment, because we're in the thick of the planting season. And as we've probably told you, work in forest restoration goes on year round. Sure, there are quieter times and busier times and this has certainly been one of the busier times.

It's not unexpected - after all we are in the midst of rainy season, and that's when we normally do the planting. But before we tell you of our adventures, let's give you a quick rundown of some of the activities that your generous donations are supporting.

Finding, cleaning and preparing the seeds (from the forest)
Identifying and sorting them
Making compost to enrich the soil (forest soils are not very fertile)
Planting the seeds in the seed bed and waiting for them to germinate: 3 - 6 weeks
Transplanting them into plastic sacks
Watering, weeding and dosing with organic fertilizer as required
When coffee harvest is over (July, August) visiting participating farms to locate priority areas for reforestation
Taking soil and water samples and selecting the best mix of species depending on the farm topography
Visting the farms before planting to check that the area is fenced and weeded and everything is in place
Digging the holes and applying organic fertilizer
Mobilizing as many volunteers as possible to help with the planting
Returning to the farms to monitor the growth of the young forests

This year things weren't entirely straightforward - and the title of this project may have given you a hint. Due to very heavy rains we had to cope with flooding, landslides and impassable dirt roads which slowed us down a lot. So we're currently 60% of the way towards making our goal of 7,000 trees planted, and we'll keep going as and how we can. Next year we're raising our target to 10,000 trees.

There's one good thing about extreme weather events. They focus the mind wonderfully. And every tree that you help us plant and maintain will help stabilize the soils, increase rainwater infiltration and avoid runoff and play an important role in flood control.

Thank you, dear donors, for your support. Please stay with us as together we restore the forests on which we all depend. Please consider, if you can, becoming a regular donor. Please share our project link with your friends and colleagues and ask them to join you in supporting the work we are doing together.

muddy but happy hugs from the rainforest,

Arielle and the Forests4Water team

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