Rio Sol Bio Corridor, Maleku Reserve, Costa Rica

The Rio Sol Biological Corridor with our family, the Maleku. In Guatuso, where the three villages are found with the Rio Sol running through, the soil is sticky gray/brown clay. This is one of the most fertile agricultural areas in Costa Rica and the growth of the trees planted in June is astounding. Here is a photo that our on-site supervisor Jimmy Acosta Elizondo took with his little cell phone. No matter it is blurry, you can see the trees growing against the brighter green of the recently cut rice.

Lillian’s 1 hectare corridor along the Rio Sol has actually been a real pain in the neck but look at those babies grow. On planting day last June the planting team found they were unwelcome when they entered the property to plant the 1000 native trees. Julio, Lillian’s son, mistakenly rented the entire farm area to a local rice grower to plant rice. When the team arrived the rice farmer told them they couldn’t walk back and forth across the newly planted field much less haul the trees to the planting area from the truck with horses. The rice farmer is our friend and is a great supporter of the project. I talked to him, promising the horses would follow the same track through the field each time and the rest of us would only walk on the unplanted borders of the field. He agreed and Lillian’s was planted.

The rice grew and grew. Last month was harvest time and we went with Jimmy and the rice farmer to have a look at the baby trees. Most of the trees had grown taller than the rice already and the rice was above our wastes. We all agreed that Jimmy would find 10 workers to cut the rice by hand with machetes in one day, harvest day, to keep the heavy machinery from cutting the baby trees and running them over with the huge wheels. Above you see the corridor safely fenced, the rice cut, the baby trees cleaned and the ones that didn’t survive have been replaced. Great work, Jimmy.

Above is just one of the 22 community nurseries at the Maleku Reserve. Moncho is participating with almost two hectares of his farm and is growing 2000 trees in his nursery. On November 17^th the inventory will be taken of all nurseries, the quantity of trees and species type in each. We bring these numbers home and start writing checks to the nursery keepers and making our new tree species list for this phase.

We have 21,000 trees to plant starting at the end of November and continuing on until we are finished. Volunteers are very much needed for this project. Funding is short and we must be able to plant these and then maintain all 35,000 immediately afterward.

PLANTING TREES AND SPREADING SEEDS!

Links:

• Maleku Deco Masks