Rio Sol Bio Corridor, Maleku Reserve, Costa Rica

There is a lot of news to report on the Rio Sol Biological Corridor project.

Sole Technology, makers of etnies shoes, has given us two fundraising deadlines for matching funds. The 31st of March was our first deadline and we hade to raise $5000 by that date. We put out an urgent request for donations during the last week of March and by March 28th this is what we had:

• $182 in donations at the Global Giving site
• $150 donation received on the LRFF website for Rio Sol
• $1000 donation by check received in Houston for Rio Sol
• $3700 donations received by LRFF/CR

          $5032 total

Thank you everyone for your great generosity. Sole Tech made the next installment of their donation on March 31^st. Sole Technology is partially funding this project but we still need plenty of matching fund to finalize it.

In the meantime, this past week, we were busy out at the Maleku Reserve looking at all of the landowner’s nurseries, counting trees and identifying the different species. We now have a tree list started with over 50 species so far and over 25 other species that we will be concentrating on in the next few months. That brings the species count to 75, more that the 70 different species we plant per hectare on all of our reforestation projects.

We have been working exclusively on the eastern bank of the Rio Sol but this week signed on the first non-indigenous landowner on the western bank. He has one kilometer of river frontage and will be reforesting a ten-meter swath along the entire length. His neighbor to the north has an even longer frontage of pasture along the river and he may be interested in participating in the project as well. This biological corridor project is becoming a reality. There will be a beautiful native forest for many kilometers on both sides of the Rio Sol where before there was only cow pastures and much erosion.

Another lady who heard about the project and whose farm of over 10 hectares is also on the western side of the river, within the Maleku Reserve, caught up with us. She and her husband want to reforest the entire farm. If this comes to pass we will have almost all 35 hectares necessary to plant the 35,000 trees that Sole Technology has hired us to do in the next year.

The Rio Sol Biological Corridor project is also featured as the Project of the Month Club on the Global Giving site for April! Go check it out. (http://www.globalgiving.org/project-of-the-month-club/) This is a great honor because only the best projects make it to this page. They tell us we can expect a minimum of $2500 in donations this month. We have another deadline with Sole at the end of June and must have raised $10,000 total in matching funds by this date.

All donations collected at the Let’s Get Planting Global Event in Berlin (http://www.letsgetplanting.com/english.htm)  for Earth Day will also go to the Rio Sol Project. Let’s get giving so that we can…………….

GET PLANTING!

Links:

• Official site Let's Get Planting Global Event, Berlin

We are particularly excited about this project as it will bring back native forest to the native peoples of Costa Rica. Already nurseries have been started with a total of 15,000 trees which will be planted onto 15 hectares in June and July. We continue to negotiate with other land holders along the Rio Sol with a goal of planting 35,000 trees on 35 hectares of land.

You know if you’ve read other project reports and seen the accompanying photos how very quickly reforestation occurs in this part of the world. Within two years many of the trees are large enough for one to walk under their branches. In eight years all signs of the area once being pasture land are gone replaced by a young, thriving native forest providing food and shelter for both wildlife and the Maleku people. Your participation in this project will help us move more quickly in bringing about the restoration of both a forest and an indigenous peoples’ way of life.

Links:

• Incredible Progress