This machete grows trees!

Dear Friends,

As the rainy season wraps up and we celebrate the end of the year, I would like to express my gratitude to you for helping us to further restore forests. Your support for this campaign is also helping us to build on our digital platform that will enable us to grown millions of trees through the leadership of small-scale farmers and youth. 

During this summer and fall, your support enabled us to plant 350 native trees at two properties in the Paso del Istmo Wildlife Corridor in southwestern Nicaragua. At the same time, we worked across six properties to patrol and protect 500 acres of forests where we had planted native trees in 2007.  We also managed reforestation at a property recently reforested, known as the Mono Bayo Reserve. There we removed weeds and prevented wildfires. We have seen the positive impact of this habitat restoration efforts. Just last week, our rangers photographed this puma (see attached) resting in the forested areas of the property. Your support helps us to sustain the diverse trees in the forest, and the fauna that depends on it. Thank you.

I am also thrilled to share more on the progress we are making on building a digital platform that will help to connect youth and farmers in a join campaign to restore forests. We are calling the project the Machete Project, because this traditional agriculture tool can be transformed into a force for farmer-mediated restoration of forests by using it to prune trees, promote regrowth, and removing weedy competitors.

We have spent the past eight months working on design details with a digital team from the software company SoftServe. The programmers in Eastern Europe, including the country of Ukraine. There have been some delays due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but we are nearing a product which we can pilot to help build a movement around tropical forest restoration.  This is a new idea and an important puzzle piece for mitigating climate change in a way that considers rural people and the young generation. Our progress on the machete project has only been possible thanks to people like you. Thank you. I look forward to sharing what comes next as we begin testing it on the ground in several tropical countries. 

In the meantime, I wish you happy holidays. Thank you for helping to grow forests in Central America and beyond.

Your truly,

Sarah

I would like to update you with some good news about our reforestation efforts made possible thanks to you. 

Last month, I traveled to El Salvador where I met with several farmers in the rural countryside. They shared information about their efforts to rebuild forests quickly by using cuttings from trees, and by planting seedlings sprouted from a seed and managed in an at-home nursery. The information they shared will go into the tree planting manual that we are developing to be both a manual and digital guide. 

During this same trip, I met with local children and local surfers at the La Punta or Punta Roca surf break to locate sites for tree-planting. Then, we led a public tree-planting together with the World Surf League nonprofit WSL PURE and the tourism development association Oriente Salvaje. This planting only involved some 30 or so native plants, but it went a long ways towards building awareness around the relevance of river and forests to ocean conservation. Thank you supporting our efforts to restore native vegetation.

We are also getting closer to our big vision to support "farmer mediated natural regeration" with  people, young and old. To reach many people and grow more trees, we have designed a digital platform that will promote restoration using native species. Recently, with your support, we have been meeting weekly with a global digital company that is offering us pro-bono support to build a business plan for this digital, forest-promoting project. We will keep you updated as we develop this digital reforestation plant. We are grateful that you support our ambitions to plant trees and create social and economic benefits for farmers. Thank you.

Finally, it is rainy season and so we have also begun efforts to cut back weeds and competing grasses from recent reforestation areas in Nicaragua. Your support makes it possible to do the long, committed work of sustaining trees even after the first few months. 

Thank you again for your incredible support! We could not do this work without you.

Sarah

Links:

• Restoration with the local communities and #WeAreOne coalition
• Video summary about the Rio Chilama reforestation effort