<
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/dollars-and-chainsaws-can-timber-production-help-fund-global-reforestation/>
"Pedro Brancalion is used to the roar of chainsaws. For years, he’s heard
loggers tearing down rainforest giants in the Brazilian Amazon, and listened as
ancient trees were toppled and yanked from the Atlantic Forest’s remaining
fragments. But this time the
rip-roar of machinery and
thwack of falling
trees means something very different.
This time, instead of chainsaws sounding a rainforest’s demise, they provide
the soundtrack to its rebirth.
Brancalion’s restoration project on Brazil’s Atlantic coast is reviving lost
rainforest, with a twist. Like other ecological restoration efforts, his work
involves the planting of thousands of tree seedlings of dozens of native
species in a plan to resuscitate a dwindling ecosystem. But there’s a big
difference here: Along with every few native plantings, his team sinks a
surprise into the ground: Eucalypts.
These represent an exotic group of tree species, mostly originating from
Australia. In Brazil, they’re usually confined to the monocrop plantations that
stretch homogenously to the horizon, rather than here, on land slated for
reforestation.
But after five years, the result is a spectacular juxtaposition that holds
promise for the future of forests. Tall, thin, harvest-ready eucalypts, primed
for a commercial timber harvest, overtop the chaotic ecology of a regrowing,
floristically diverse rainforest.
When Brancalion’s team chainsaws down these non-native sentinels and sells
their wood as timber, they recoup up to 75% of the costs of regenerating the
rainforest. And, according to recent research, they do so without inhibiting
the regeneration of the complex understory — the rainforest of the future — as
it grows skyward below."
Via
The Fixer February 8, 2023:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/an-invasive-species-is-helping-to-restore-the-amazon/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
