Planting trees for people and birds

The Jovel Valley Basin is a closed basin with valuable natural elements such as rivers, springs, high mountain wetlands, pine-oak, and cloud forests. The cultural importance in the use of natural resources is also a relevant component in this region with native peoples. This social and ecosystemic complexity is intertwined every summer to carry out reforestation and conservation actions in a region of confluence. Preserving the resources provided by forests is a need felt by the entire population: rural and urban.

The rural population within the Jovel Valley watershed is located in the upper reaches. They are the main owners of the territory, who are part of the forest landscape and the main managers of forest management by using direct resources such as firewood and timber. On the other hand, the urban population is located downstream, often alien to these processes that favor the provision of natural resources such as water, wood and charcoal that reach the nearby markets and come from this rural management.

Our production of native trees favors the management and the need of landowners who wish to conserve and carry out reforestation actions. The donation of these plants contributes to the preservation of environmental services and the conservation of habitats and biodiversity. And not least to generate interaction, coexistence and appreciation between the rural and urban population by promoting joint reforestation actions.

The following are the achievements during the reforestation efforts in summer 2024, shown in two types of interventions. Both are important and require a great deal of inter-institutional collaboration and coordination.

1)    Social Reforestation. During the summer of 2024, a constant invitation was extended to citizens to participate in 21 social reforestation events in which reforestation was carried out in an area of 18 hectares, in the upper parts of the watershed, dominated by pine-oak ecosystems. These events are part of the “Jovel Valley Watershed Reforestation Campaign”. This concrete activity promotes interaction between rural and urban human populations to recognize the importance of where environmental services, biodiversity and water that reaches the city come from. Also, the importance to participate in recovering damaged or lost forest patches along the watershed. During this social reforestation, 1,800 of people participated (from children to elders).

2)    Rural farm Reforestation. During the reforestation campaign, groups of farmers living in scattered localities throughout the Jovel Valley watershed come to Pronatura Sur's nursery and to the nursery of partner NGO Your Forest to request a certain number of trees, according to the needs they have detected in their localities, and according to their capacity to plant them during the rainy season. We usually recorded how many species and quantities of trees have been taken and in which localities they are to be planted. The planting of these trees is carried out by the farmers in these indigenous localities, without the participation of citizens from outside the community, by decision of the applicants themselves. In this restoration modality, 170 farmers requested trees, and took 159,880 trees to plant in the communities where they live.

Both activities were coordinated by a group of technicians and nursery workers from the NGOs Pronatura Sur, Ciudadanos, and Tu Bosque, who accompanied the Social Reforestation events. The same personnel provided advice to the 170 requests received from farmers to carry out the Peasant Reforestation. 

Links:

• Pronatura Sur web page