Restoring Forests in Guatuso, Alajuela, Costa Rica

We have been interested in submitting an application to the Whitley Award Foundation in the UK for a couple of years now but never got around to it. This year, in fact just four days ago, we submitted our application for the 2014 Whitley Award.

The award honors a person, that would be me, but is actually a grant for a project and the funding must be used within one year from receiving the prize. The prize is £35,000 or about $57,000 (USD).  Matt Lee, President of LRFF/US, and I worked for a couple of months on the application and in the beginning we only wanted to apply to fund the feasibility study on the forest carbon project we’ve had developed for 5 years now. But that’s only $15,000…we had to figure out some other projects to fund and voila we thought of “Reforesting Guatuso”.

The funding would be disbursed next May or June but after the finalists are announced later this year each makes a trip to the UK. If LRFF does receive notification of the prize we can get the landowners started with their nurseries at the beginning of 2014 so that planting can begin as soon as the funding is received in May or June. 

Since you are a part of this project, you’ve contributed generously and helped make it happen, I want you to consider putting this award and potential implementation of “Reforesting Guatuso” in the back of your mind, send us positive vibrations. Why, my friend, Cagan Sekercioglu has won the Whitley Award twice, in 2008 and this year he was the Gold Award winner. Number one alumnus of the award and he does the same sort of work as LRFF is doing, connecting forested areas working with local landowners for the benefit of birds, wildlife, plants and climate change mitigation.

Hey, I already feel the vibes comin’ this way.

LET’S GET PLANTING!

Links:

• Whitley Award Foundation home page