By Jane Segleau | Project director
Hector Morera knocked on our door a few months ago, and sat down with Jose- our forestry engineer, to see if planting trees seemed like a good idea on his 6 hectarea property. Tired of erratic market proces for other agricultural crops, he really wanted something to invest his time an resources in, while improving his farm. He listened carefully to all Jose´s explanations about how to plant, where to plant, what to plant- and asked questions about the many details of a tree plantation: costs, growth, management, possible benefits, potential problems, and how to combine trees with yuca- his favorite cash crop. Today he´s planted over 4,500 trees. His enthusiasm and devotion to this project made him also the reciever of 100 extra trees awarded by a local business that works through ASIREA, to offset the carbon produced by its sales of computers.
Hector is one of the over 75 families that reached out to reforest their farmes this year, inspite of the fact that our region is going through dificult financial issues and is hard hit by climate change. ASIREA as an organization continues to assist these families with techinical advice, and we are also creating a wood marketing program to assure that the prices of their wood crop will be fair when they harvest the wood in the future. The donations made by so many friends of ASIREA allowed us also to promote our services among the rural communities, something we do everyday to also reach out to those who have forest and can protect it with Environmental Payment Services.
We can truthfully say this has been one of the hardest years we have ever faced, due to the difficulties associated with Environmental Payment Services this year, yet at the same time, the people who work with ASIREA have shown an enormous resilence and dedication to our mission of reforestation for and with the local people as a sustainable option to produce wood- and NOT plant polluting monocultures or worse...sell their land for lack of options. We SYILL need your support and donations to this project are needed and welcome.
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