Forest Restoration: It’s About More than Just the Trees
Forest restoration and forest rehabilitation are challenging long-term endeavours that require thoughtful planning, implementation, and monitoring. While they are closely related, a conceptual distinction may be made between them. The purpose of forest restoration is to restore a degraded forest to its original state – that is, to re-establish the presumed structure, productivity, and species diversity of the forest originally present at a site. The purpose of forest rehabilitation is to restore the capacity of degraded forest land to deliver forest products and services. Forest rehabilitation re-establishes the original productivity of the forest and some, but not necessarily all, of the plant and animal species thought to be originally present at a site. Both forest restoration and forest rehabilitation are implemented on sites or in landscapes where forest loss has caused a decline in the quality of environmental services. They aim to strengthen the resilience of forest sites and landscapes and thereby keep future land-use and management options open.
“Successful Forest Restoration programs generates a wide range of benefits; it is not only forest quantity and quality, but improved air and water quality, job creation, enhanced food security, climate change resilience, and much more”. – Rajeev Singh
Our Core Elements of forest restoration – These can be combined in various ways
a. Planting Native Trees :
This is an important part of forest restoration our reforestation programs need to plant seedlings and grow their own native trees.
b. Improving Nature of Soils:
We make arrangements for the needs of Soil with microbes and small bugs such as centipedes, beetles, and worms to thrive. We add organic matter to the soil which radically changes a forest and support restored forest health.
c. Protecting Wildlife Corridors:
we Look at how plants and animals move and reproduce across landscapes which is the key to forest restoration. A corridor can allow animals to travel among forest fragments, significantly improving their chances of surviving, reproducing, and flourishing.
d. Managing Land Sustainably :
We Work with stakeholders to promote practices like agroforestry; provides huge benefits to forest restoration efforts.
“Forest Restoration is about improving landscapes that are deforested, degraded, or are under utilised”. – Rajeev Singh
Focus on landscapes – Our team takes place within and across entire landscapes, not individual sites, representing mosaics of interacting land uses. It is the scale that ecological, natural, social, and economic priorities can be balanced.
These are the guiding principles that we follow while undertaking any Forest Restoration Projects:-
- Selection of a suitable site or landscape as per requirements and needs of our clients.
- Our Team Analyses and Evaluates the current land uses and future prospects with the stakeholders.
- Our Team Analyses and Evaluates the drivers of deforestation or forest degradation.
- We actively Engage stakeholders, discuss long-term goals of forest restoration considering their area of interest.
- We draft a preliminary restoration/ rehabilitation plan for discussion with Stakeholders.
- We draft a restoration management plan with the consultation and guidance of experts in these fields.
- We prepare a topographic land-use map.
- We prepare a designation of forest functions, assessment of road accessibility.
- We make strategies for the existence of natural regeneration and needs for planting.
- We discuss and get agreed with stakeholders on restoration/rehabilitation objectives.
- We discuss and get agreed with stakeholders on selecting the restoration/rehabilitation methods
- We select and choose the species to be used.
- Establishment of the project working office at the project site
- We make necessary arrangements for establishing a modern Nursery
- We assess the possible positive and negative social and environmental impacts of the execution plan.
- Get seeds, produce seedlings in nurseries and prepare for planting.
- Proceed for 4 Tier Planting
- Assess capacity-building needs and plan for the necessary ongoing project monitoring training.
- Establish realistic time schedules and plan for financial requirements.
- Monitor restored/rehabilitated areas, and conduct maintenance activities as required
- Consider possible climate-change impacts.
“Forest Restoration is more than just planting trees ; it is restoring a whole landscape to meet present and future needs & to offer multiple benefits and land uses over time”. – Rajeev Singh