By Jessica Knierim | Developement Associate
Timber can be a cash crop meaning that it is sometimes grown to produce a profit rather than for use by the grower. The problem with this mentality is that people will go into an existing forest and see money signs rather than ecological benefits for the life dependent on it. With this mentality, people will clear-cut a forest and not replace the trees they cut. Across Cambodia, the rate of deforestation is far surpassing the rate of reforestation and it is causing a lot of detrimental effects to local communities, wildlife species and other biodiversity in the surrounding areas. Wildlife is being exiled from their homes, local communities are experiencing a shortage of nutrients in the soils for agriculture, and waterways are either drying out or flooding due to erosion, which is detrimental to both local communities and wildlife.
Wildlife Alliance’s Tropical Reforestation Project combats the issue of illegal logging and slash-burn farming practices while providing sustainable jobs to local residences. Recognizing that deforestation is hard to eliminate we took our work to be proactive in the replanting denuded rainforest areas which helps to maintain continuous forest cover and preserve vital watershed areas, restore carbon absorption capacity, conserve nutrients in the soil, repair gaps and provide corridors for elephant and other wildlife to more freely throughout their range and mitigate human-wildlife conflicts.
Wildlife Alliance has planted over 1 million trees in the Southern Cardamom Mountain Range. Last quarter, almost 27,000 seedlings were transferred from the green house in Chi Phat to the shade nets at the Road 48 and Sihanouk ville reforestations sites for maintenance and over 50,000 seedlings were produced in shade net nursery. This huge project is an international priority because it is located in the Indo-Burma Peninsula in Southeast Asia, which is one of the most threatened rainforests in the world. Only 5% of this rainforest’s original range remains today and Cambodia represents almost 20% of it. Thank you for helping us combat this international concerning issue by allowing us to plant trees in fragmented forests through sustainable means and wildlife conscience decisions!
By Jessica Knierim | Development Associate
By Jessica Knierim | Development Associate
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