Planting trees to save the planet!

Dear donors,

How's it going with you? We really hope you are doing well and inching towards getting the vaccine – or may even already be vaccinated?

It seems hard to remember the old normal, doesn’t it? But the new normal is pretty full-on in our neck of the woods.

We’ve been enlarging the forest nursery, starting with building more seed tables. This involves cutting wood for the supports, welding together the framework, painting it with anti-rust paint, wiring on the heavy duty mesh, and then erecting the removable shading. Each seed table holds around 350 seedlings, maybe more now that we’ve ordered smaller bags to plant them in.

And then there’s the irrigation system. It may seem odd to talk of irrigation in a rainforest, but it doesn't rain every single day, and young seedlings can be very thirsty!

You can get an idea of what we've been doing from the photos, and we’re showing the older model of seedling table which is made of bamboo so you can compare it with the improved model. 

We’re very excited to be enlarging the nursery and want to send you all a big thank you for making this possible.

Between us we’re planting trees, planting ideas and planting hope!

Lots of rainforest love, and look after yourselves,

Deivid and the Iracambi foresters.

PS You see the guy in the cover picture? He's Marcelo, new forest nursery team member. We'll tell you more about him in our next letter.

Dear wonderful donors,

We have lots of exciting news for you today, and we’d love to do three things up front. First, to send you a big vote of thanks for supporting this project and enabling us to plant and care for thousands of trees.

And then to give you a sneak peek at our ambitious new plan to plant 55,000 trees in honor of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration!

And finally to invite you to join us in this exciting new program – a community response to the climate crisis through joining existing forest fragments into a big, beautiful forest corridor that will store carbon, protect water, conserve biodiversity and create habitat for wildlife!

So now for the housekeeping. We’ll be closing out this project on April 5^th so we can focus all our energies on #22098 Forests4Water: Community Climate Action, and we’ll be reinforcing our invitation for you to join us there. Don’t worry, we’ll remind you in our next letter from the field.

Now for a bit of background about the Serra do Brigadeiro mountains where we live. It’s a wonderful area of rugged terrain and one of the highest priority conservation areas in the whole state. Much of the area above 1000 meters is protected in the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park, and we are located within the buffer zone – a 10 km radius surrounding the park. It’s a treasure house of endemic and endangered species – in fact, species previously unknown to science are still being discovered! While we don’t really want to single out favorites, we must give an honorable mention to the Woolly Spider Monkey, which is the largest primate in the Americas, and on the Red List of threatened species. As it happens, the largest population of the northern woolly spider monkey, (known as muriqui in Brazil,) is found in the forests in the Serra do Brigadeiro!

Check out the Google Earth map so you can see where we’ll be making the forest corridor. Two of the plots are named Iracambi and Iracambi 2. These are on areas that are being purchased for Iracambi specifically to be restored. If you look at the bottom LH corner of the map you’ll see a forest patch with a house in it. This is an area previously donated to the NGO and we’re enclosing a picture of the forest restoration that has already been done there, in less than seven years. The remaining areas marked Kyvia, Ariele, Dudu, and Rubens and Cassia adjoining the Iracambi sites are also scheduled for forest restoration, making a total of 30 hectares. At the top of the google map, you’ll see an area of forest that adjoins the State Park, so you can see what a strategic location this is for a forest corridor. And you'll also see other cleared areas that are ripe for restoration.

So we’re starting the big adventure because there’s no time to waste. Thank you for your amazing support, and please join us as we prepare to plant the next 55000 trees!  

 More news soon, in the meantime, please take care!

With rainforest love from Deivid and everyone at Iracambi.