The Miombo Belt Regeneration Programme

This is the first update since we transformed our individual projects on GlobalGiving into Programmes, meaning that while your donations are continuing to protect and restore forests in your original projects, they’re also supporting new projects that use the same restoration techniques. As our ‘Earth Allies’, you’ll be supporting us to restore more land, grow more trees, and boost forest-friendly incomes for more families than ever before.

The Katanino team recently shared the moving story of Aubrey C. and his family, who've been involved with the project from the start and have weathered some challenges along the way. Aubrey, 33, started working with WeForest in July 2019, collecting socio-economic baseline data. In 2020, he joined the Katanino Law Enforcement Team to patrol the Forest Reserve. Along with 14 others, he reduced illegal charcoal incidents from 296 in February 2020 to zero by April 2022.

The allowance from forest patrols was his family's main income. Unfortunately, in 2023, he became visually impaired and couldn't continue his duties. His wife, Olipa, took over as the breadwinner through our Treadle Pump Scheme, growing cabbages. Despite his loss of sight, Aubrey helps by pumping water. They now earn enough from vegetable sales to cover food, school materials, and seeds for their 0.25 ha plot.

Still in Katanino, the project was the subject of a recent article in Mongabay, the world’s most popular rainforest information site. ‘Zambian forest reserve rebounds with a little assistance’, by Ryan Truscott, explores the incredible work of our team on the ground and these communities, who have restored over 500 hectares of the Katanino Forest Reserve using assisted natural regeneration.

Read the article at https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/zambian-forest-reserve-rebounds-with-a-little-assistance/

Over in the Copperbelt province, our Copperbelt project’s new Dairy Expansion Scheme is aiming to tackle agriculture, the greatest driver of deforestation in the province. The scheme will train 620 smallholder farmers, organized into cooperatives, to transition to climate-smart agriculture to sustainably produce dairy feed and manage their rangelands. The project will also support selected cooperatives to establish agroforestry nurseries, which will act as reliable and affordable sources of agroforestry seedlings for small-scale farmers while generating revenue for them and ensuring their financial sustainability in the long-term. 

Further east, a three-year camera trap study - a collaborative effort by WeForest and the Mpumba Natural Resources Conservation Society (MNRCS) - has revealed encouraging trends in the Chintumukulu Conservancy, which is part of our large-scale Mpumba Forest Landscape project. The study recorded 36 species of mammals and birds, including lions, leopards, and antelopes, showing a steady increase in wildlife numbers from 2021 to 2023 - testament to our effective forest management and law-enforcement operations, which have created a haven that enhances breeding success and attracts more wildlife. Species are also using a wider range of habitats within the conservancy, and there is a healthy balance between predators and prey.

Thank you for helping to make all this possible! 

In our Katanino project, an assessment by WeForest's Monitoring and Evaluation experts used remote sensing imaging to map and quantify the reserve between the project's launch in 2019 and the end of 2023. Their discovery is truly a triumph of nature  — a 57.3% surge in forest cover, equivalent to 587 hectares! 

That's not even counting the seedlings that were planted in enrichment sites in the reserve in late 2020 and early 2021, as they're still too young and small to be classified as ‘forest’ in this assessment. This means something even more wonderful:  the increased tree cover is coming from natural regeneration, which we're nudging along with techniques such as coppicing.

With no planting needed in the forest, all the planting this season (November 2023 to February 2024) took place within the agroforestry or pine production livelihood schemes. This nursery worker (below) is collecting agroforestry seedlings – Moringa, Leuceana, Faidherbia and Gliricidia – to distribute to two satellite nurseries where families in the agroforestry programme can access the seedlings close to their homes. 

Thank you for helping to make all this possible!