Birch Grove Nature Preserve

It's been an intense, wet summer for us here in northern Mongolia. We've had torrential rains like we've never seen in the past four years. Lots of roads out and damaged buildings. It's been sad seeing people in our local community have to clean up their torn up roads and yards only to have a new flash flood come raging through.

The over saturated ground hasn't been great for our trees, too much wet means choked seedling roots. But the weather is looking up this week and it's perfect timing as we've got three great volunteers from France with us for the next 10 days to get a jump-start on fall planting! 

They're three university students who are in Mongolia for a month helping various NGOs around the country before continuing their studies in Paris. They're eager to help and we're grateful for the extra hands!

We're going to be working on putting together a detailed map of the land, forested areas, logged out areas, future planting areas, etc... it will help us make a plan for our future plantings and reforestation efforts.

We're also going to be clearing a new large planting area for new seedlings before transplanting them around to needed areas of the land.

It's going to be a great time and we will post updates and photos as we work through this fall planting time before winter.

Thank you for your continued support of this project to help protect and preserve Mongolia's forests and natural beauty!

We've been growing around 400 hybrid poplars inside in preparation of warm weather out at Birch Grove. Two different varieties that we're experimenting with here. Our purpose is to be able to find a strain that is fast growing, easy to propagate, and can survive the harsh weather here. They will be used for general reforesting purposes as well as dust barriers, anti-errosion measures, and a renewable firewood source.

Once the ground is finished thawing out we will also be working to transplant a few varieties of local trees from up in the mountains. We've very excited about replanting this area and making it a positive example to the surrounding communities and empower them to protect their own natural forested areas against the issues they are facing today with illegal logging, arid areas, and overgrazing.