• November 2023

    Even though the teak trees already measure three meters in height, the grass is cut around the tree. The huge, lush green leaves show that the teak trees are doing well and a planting distance of 4 x 4 meters is a good choice.

Timber-Partner-Programs

We are currently busy planting teak seedlings in Patag, Marilog. There are over 5,000 of them, which is a lot of work for our team. But as we have been digging the holes for weeks, we can manage it. Forester Ace, who is in charge of the planting in Patag, sends us a detailed interim report with photos of the planting every Saturday. When this campaign is completed, it will be the end of the day in Patag for this year because, as has been reported several times, Christmas is celebrated in the Philippines on an ecstatic note. Nothing happens until the first week of January.
The first Mama Earth trees were harvested in Monkayo and Montevista. There aren’t very many, because we only cut the trees when they are over 30 centimeters in diameter, but every tree that is harvested triggers a payment to the farmer and the partner who financed the tree. Harvesting all the trees will certainly take a few years, as many trees do not yet have the required diameter.
n order to process the logs into planks more effectively, we had planned to buy a mobile band saw at the beginning of next year, which is now available in China at moderate prices. However, we have not yet been granted the necessary operating license because we have to apply for it in Manila, as this is the first time that an application for a mobile band saw has been submitted in Mindanao. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) office in Monkayo, where your trees are registered, is currently checking which person in Manila could be responsible for this. Fortunately, we planned the harvest in time so we now have time to wait for the permit. So until we get permission to operate a mobile band saw, the trees are still being cut into planks with a chainsaw.

The last delivery of teak seedlings for this year in Patagam November 6, 2023. In five weeks, all should be planted, because then the pre-Christmas celebrations begin.

The first mahogany planks were loaded in Monkayo on November 24, 2023. Preparations for further harvests in the first half of 2024 have been completed.

Our small office in Guang Guang National Park is rent-free. We got it from the mayor Michelle Nakpil Rabat because we have planted so many mangroves in Mati and will be planting many more.

A lot of work again. The Guang Guang Nature Park has an area of over 85 hectares in the middle, which will be reforested. We will start collecting the seeds of five different mangrove species before Christmas.

Mangrove activities

There are still 100,000 mangroves in the nursery. These will be planted from mid-January 2024 until the first week of February. But the next Herculean task is already in preparation: reforesting the last open areas in the Guang Guang Nature Park. After that, everything will be fully planted, but our work is far from over, because we still have enough areas for mangroves to restore Pujada Bay to its natural state.
In between, at the beginning of February 2023, we will plant around 9,000 pagatpat mangroves (Sonneratia alba, or apple mangrove), which will grow as close as possible to the artificial reef that will be anchored at the same time in front of the reforestation by the Swiss group RRReefs (www.rrreefs.com). The stamens of the pagatpat mangrove flowers open for just one night to produce green, leathery berries that look like apples. They are imposing trees that grow up to 20 meters high and have a wrinkled bark reminiscent of old oak trees. Many of these old trunks are hollow, but the mangrove trees are nevertheless perfectly healthy and can live for well over 100 years. Their roots are also special, spreading out sideways and forming conical, pore-rich respiratory roots (pneumatophores) that grow upright from the main roots, often over half a meter high, to “breathe”, i.e. to supply the mangrove with oxygen.
As if that wasn’t enough, there is another project in our pipeline, but this will only be tackled once the areas in Guang Guang have been reforested. We can plant around 250,000 mangroves here. This area in Digos has amazing fauna and flora, including a rich biodiversity of birds, sea turtles, reptiles and fish, as well as offshore reefs.