The Wildlife Corridors 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 images above show Estrela farm in the Pontal project’s north corridor, where 138 hectares of tree planting took place in May 2022 (the area on the left) and February 2023 (on the right). The top picture shows the view in early 2023, just after the area on the right was planted, and the bottom is the same view in January 2024. The results speak for themselves! 

When we visited our Tietê Forests project with AES in April, students from Instituto Terra presented some great results from their monitoring of the Dandara agroforestry project. All of the farmers are happy with the project, and three-quarters of them are even applying agroforestry techniques in other parts of their farms! The survey found that before starting the project, the farmers' main motivations in joining were economic and well-being; after their agroforestry plots had been established, they also appreciated the added benefits of agroforestry systems: the importance of growing agro-ecological food in the rural settlement, and how collective activities during setup and maintenance strengthen the community.

Six of the 2022 agroforestry plots have started vegetable production, with an estimated 7 tons of produce harvested, mainly lemons, eggplants, scarlet eggplants and around 17 other species of vegetable. The farmers raised more than BRL 43,000 ($7800) from vegetable sales, with Rose and Donizete’s produce alone raising an astonishing BRL 28,164! 

As for the Misiones project in Argentina, our partner FVS recently produced two great 20-minute videos that really give a feel for the landscape and the lives of the people living there. 

In “STORIES OF RESTORATION - Water and dignity”, some of the farmers in San Pedro municipality who are working with FVS and WeForest talk about how the improved water supplies provided by the project have boosted their yields of yerba mate, as well as supporting the restoration of their farmland into forest patches. Watch it here. https://youtu.be/Lxq_9Ox068Y?si=_9BzNJLTbgbMbOMb

“STORIES OF RESTORATION - The entrepreneurs from Alegría Colony” tells the story of a group of women producers who set up a nursery to supply the project’s participating farmers with native tree seedlings for their agroforestry plots. Watch it here. https://youtu.be/k9WkobO9Jms?si=zQHbWE9dOGTh-p1h

Thank you for helping to make all this possible!

The third year of acoustic data collection to monitor biodiversity in our Pontal project was completed by the end of 2023. While the final results and analysis will be ready later in 2024, Rainforest Connection (RFCx) have identified a total of 187 species across 132 sampling sites – 174 birds, 9 amphibians, two insects and two monkeys: the endangered black lion tamarin and the black capuchin (above). 

The second year of sound collection detected nine new species in WeForest and IPÊ’s sites compared to the first year – a good sign that biodiversity is improving! Most excitingly, the average species richness in our restoration sites (24 species) was nearly equal to that of mature forest sites (25 species). In contrast, agricultural sites had an average of just 15 species.

To listen to the species detected in our Pontal sites, go to the Arbimon Insights platform at https://arbimon.org/p/weforest-wildlife-corridors/insights (go to the “Spotlight” tab and select a species from the scroll list).

In the Tietê Forests project, these amazing drone pictures were taken over our sites by our restoration partner Ceiba. This area was planted in 2022, and the second photo was taken in January this year, just over a year later – just look at the progress! 

Thank you for helping to make all this possible!