Forests4Water Brazil: Community Climate Action

Greetings, dear friends, donors and supporters wherever you may be!

Today´s the day!

It´s Climate Action Week and we´re going to say a collective Happy Birthday, Planet Earth!

And keep working on that beautiful big birthday present we told you about. – our pledge to plant 55,000 trees by the end of next year.

Donations will be 100% matched for the first $100. Please spread the word and donate if you can! 

We've set ourselves this goal in honor of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and the urgent need to do something about climate change. We have the land, we have community interest, we've been working hard on fundraising, and all we need is more cash to finance the making and buying in the seedlings, and paying for the labor costs of planting and maintaining the baby trees.   

So how can you help?

There's a couple of different ways.
1. Make a donation if you can!

2. Spread the word among your friends, family, and colleagues, encouraging them to share our link on their networks and join you in donating. Together we can get those trees planted, storing carbon, helping to mitigate the effects of global warming, and protecting our common home, this beautiful planet.

So would you join us and make a donation towards those wonderful fifty acres of rainforest?

Every donation this week is matched at 100% for the first $100!

Thank you all so much, and please stay safe,

with rainforest hugs from the Iracambi Forestry Team  

Links:

• project page

Hey there, friends, donors and supporters wherever you are on this beautiful earth! 

We hope you are doing well and that you can finally see light at the end of the covid tunnel? 

We want to remind you that next week is Earth Day. It´s not just Earth Day, it´s Climate Action Week (April 19-23) so let´s get busy! 

Because the climate crisis won´t wait.   

And because the earth does so much for us every minute of every day, we´d like to invite you to join us in giving her a big, beautiful present on her special day.  

Can you guess what it is?

No, it´s not the sort of present that comes gift wrapped with a big bow. It´s more like the gift that keeps on giving.

Here´s the scoop. We´re going to plant, not 10,000, not 20,000, not 30,000 but 55,000 rainforest trees by the end of next year. All part of restoring the majestic Atlantic Forest.

Fifty acres of rainforest. Storing carbon, providing clean air and fresh water, restoring habitat for forest animals and helping keep zoonotic dieases where they belong. Because when we destroy habitat, we increase the likelihood of these diseases spreading to humans. And causing a catastrophic pandemic like covid19 that spreads around the world like wildfire.

Together we can take steps to reverse global warming and help prevent another pandemic. How cool is that? 

So will you join us in saying a big thank you to this beautiful planet? Here´s how you can help. Would you be on for spreading the word in your networks of friends, family and colleagues, and asking them to join you in donating to the big birthday present for Planet Earth? All donations, whether one off or monthly, are matched at 100% for the first $100 - how about that for an easy way to double your impact?

Thank you so much, dear donors, please take care and we´ll talk soon,

with rainforest love from the Iracambi Tree Planting Team 

PS Don´t forget to tell everyone about the 100% matching funds! (Thank you, GlobalGiving!) 

Good afternoon, dear donors, supporters and friends, and we hope you are looking after yourselves?

Are you ready for another action-packed bulletin from the rainforest? Because there's a lot going on...

Now that the main planting season is safely past, you might have thought it was time to relax a little? Sit in the shade and read a good book? Well - no. In fact, Deivid and his team are busier than ever. 

First off there's the maintenance of the baby trees we planted this season. If we don't visit them regularly - particularly in the first few weeks after planting, they can get smothered by the weeds, eaten by some passing herbivore, or attacked by leaf cutting ants. So we need to clear the weeds and grass in a circle around the trees, and also give them a dose of fertilizer to encourage them to keep growing.

Meanwhile back in the nursery, the expansion project is going full steam ahead. New seedling tables are being assembled, painted with rust-proof paint and almost immediately put into service. Some of the seeds are germinated in germination beds on the ground, others go directly into bags of soil on the seed tables, depending on their preferences.  

When the team needs a break, they are off in the forest hunting seeds, always a favorite job. And there´s more to it than just finding and identifying seeds – most of them need to be treated through scarification - which means ensuring that they can break through the outer coating which has so far protected them from being eaten! This is done by soaking, or by abrasion with sandpaper - varying again according to the species.  And, after all that work, germination rate is low, so they will collect a lot more seeds than will actually germinate, and not every seed that germinates will survive and turn into a healthy seedling.

Then there are records to be kept, germinated seedlings to be transplanted, and all of them to be carefully tended and given access to sunshine, shade and watering. 

And, did we tell you about the on-farm nurseries that Iracambi is establishing? These involve visits to the farms delivering seeds, bags, organic fertilizer, along with exchanging information and drinking cups of hot, sweet coffee. Uptake on the forest nursery idea has been encouraging, since it´s not a traditional farm activity, but those farmers that are interested are becoming more enthusiastic by the day, and the children are always excited when Deivid and his team show up!

So you can see that there isn´t much time for sitting in the shade with a good book..... 

And before we know it, we´ll be starting to prepare for the next planting season. Stay tuned for our next bulletin, and so many thanks for your support and your kind words. Together we´re getting it done. 

Planting trees, planting ideas, and planting hope.

Look after yourselves and we´ll talk soon! 

with rainforest love from Deivid and the Iracambi foresters  

Dear wonderful donors,

Happy World Water Day and we want to give you all a big shoutout for being a part of helping restore and protect water for dozens of farm families in our neck of the woods. And for thousands of downstream water consumers.

So, to celebrate water, we want to tell you a story about how our program got started. And it was no credit to us!

It all began with Adão. He is our next door neighbor and you can see his picture below. Adão has a large extended family living on his property, and for years he could never quite make ends meet. 

Now, Adão is a traditional farmer and had often been heard to remark that trees were for monkeys. In fact, he had cleared his steep mountain slope so he could plant more coffee, and, like everyone else, he cleaned the ground between the coffee bushes so that the weeds didn’t compete with the coffee.

We get a lot of rain around here, and soon the bare soil around his coffee bushes started eroding. Precious soil was carried down into the creek. And then disaster struck.

His spring ran dry.

Adão had heard the folks at Iracambi talk about planting trees, but to him it made no sense. As far as he was concerned, trees were taking up valuable space that could be used for coffee.

But he couldn’t figure out how to solve his water problem. He sent his wife down to the creek with a bucket. She didn’t think much of that, and what was a bucket when the farm needed so much water?

So he came to us for help. Iracambi offered to plant some trees on the steep slope above his spring. We explained that they would help control erosion, and that when the rains came his spring should run again.

In the meantime he figured out a temporary solution. He planted the trees and waited.

When the rains came, his spring recovered. And every year the water flow increased. 

That was the origin of our Forests4Water program. Adão became one of our most important ambassadors in the community. He started planting beans in between the coffee bushes. And now he produces some of the best coffee around.

Since then, thanks to your support, we’ve protected and restored springs on dozens of farms, and we’ve a long list of farmers wanting to join the program.

Thanks to you, and thanks to Adão, who had the courage to ask for a solution he didn’t even trust to work, we were able to start our program. Attitudes to tree planting are beginning to change.

Together we're planting trees, planting ideas and planting hope. 

Thank you! 

Happy World Water Day!

wirth rainforest love from the Iracambi Forestry Team  

Links:

• Coffee with Adao video

Dear wonderful donors,

We have lots of exciting news for you today, and we’d love to do a couple of things upfront. First, to send you a big vote of thanks for supporting this project. Over the past few years your donations have enabled us to plant 26,000 trees, restoring water and restoring hope to dozens of farm families. Thank you, thank you!  

Next, we want to unveil our ambitious new plan to plant 55,000 trees in honor of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration! We've told you a little before now, so here is the backstory.  

As you know, the original focus for this program was to reforest on family farms in response to the water crisis.

Both the uptake from farmers, and the support  from you, dear donors, have been magnificent. So much so that, after consulting our friends and neighbors, we have decided to launch a unified community response to the climate crisis, starting by linking existing forest fragments into a big, beautiful forest corridor that will store carbon, protect water, conserve biodiversity and create habitat for wildlife!

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! It's also an important watershed whose waters feed into two of the major rivers in southeastern Brazil: the Paraiba do Sul and the Rio Doce. And as you know, it's an area of family farms. Restoring and regenerating forest cover in these mountains will have a direct impact, not only on the local communities, but also on thousands of downstream consumers of water and electricity (hydropowered.)  

And we don't have to tell you that planting trees is one of the quickest, most economic and most effective ways of combatting climate change. (IPCC, 2019) 

Check out the Google Earth map so you can see where we’ll be building 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 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 which adjoins the State Park, and you’ll also see other cleared areas that are ripe for restoration.

So, with encouragement from the local community and from each one of you, we’re starting the next big adventure. And we’re thrilled to have you with us!

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

With rainforest love from Alfredo and everyone at Iracambi.