The International Day of Forests is celebrated every year on March 21st all over the World. The day was established in 2012 by the United Nations General Assembly and is intended to celebrate and raise awareness about forest conservation, the climate and action for earth’s future. The theme specifically for 2021 is “Forest Restoration: A Path to Recovery and Well-being”. This is a theme not just for today but has been an important theme for years. And with Masarang we have taken this theme very serious for over 20 years now, and our efforts with the restoration of forests have proven to be a true path to well-being. Allow me to highlight a few of our past efforts and end with a short update on our newest forest restoration project, the exciting and very advanced Temboan Forest Restoration Project.
Our Masarang Foundation is named after the Masarang Mountain, where we first started tackling the restoration of the steep denuded slopes of this old volcano mountain chain. This is where we planted our first 100.000 Cempaka and Wasian trees, besides testing numerous other tree species in smaller quantities. These two species were almost gone from the landscape in Tomohon, where this mountain chain is located. We invested much in research on germination, vegetative propagation and planting of these two tree species that are the most important timbers for the traditional wooden houses in this region of North Sulawesi that have also become an important export product.
Example of the wooden house industry in the city of Tomohon, built mostly with very durable timber from the Cempaka and Wasian trees. Masarang’s reforestation with these tree species helps reduce the rampant illegal timber trade from protected areas.
Masarang also set up many different tree seedling nurseries in the region from where millions of trees were planted by other groups and individual land owners. Masarang made agreements that were co-signed by the local authorities on the obligation of the recipients of the seedlings to maintain them. They were allowed to harvest them when the trees were fully grown but had then the obligation to do that in a staged way to reduce erosion and to replace the harvested trees with newly planted trees. Now the results of that program can be seen all over North Sulawesi like in the picture beneath:
One of a huge number of plots of land that were planted with the valuable Cempaka trees from Masarang in cooperation with the local people on their private plots of land.
But Masarang also produced already a quarter of a million sugar palm seedlings that are now planted all over Indonesia. The sugar palms only grow well in mixed forests and provide more than 60 useful products amongst which the most valuable are palm sugar, palm fibers, palm fruits and palm timber. Sugar palms are not to be confused with oil palms that are responsible for the loss of huge areas of forest. Beneath a picture of one of the many nurseries where we grow our specially selected best quality sugar palms.
Water for the local people
Five years after we started buying land on the slopes of the Masarang Mountain and planting the new forests there, the annual floods in parts of the city of Tomohon completely stopped and local people were able to grow a third crop of rice in the rice fields that were fed with water from the springs that originate from aquifers coming from the Masarang Mountain. Not only that, the new forest also increased rainfall and acted as a fog capturing forest and that, in combination with the reduced run off and improved water infiltration in the soil, increased the flow of water from the springs significantly. Masarang also acquired the springs from private owners and is now providing thousands of people in Tomohon with free and secure water.
On the other side of the Masarang Mountain some seven new springs appeared after our reforestation efforts and the women of the nearby village of Rurukan came to the foundation and asked for a loan and for permission to install a pipe from these springs to their houses down the slope. Now hundreds of families there enjoy clean water where before the women had to go down the slope to a small and polluted stream. Now they have more time, the health of the families has improved and the women are helping Masarang to plant more trees as their sign of gratitude. Yes, forest restoration truly can bring well-being!
The Temboan Forest Restoration Project
This is the latest big project that the Masarang Foundation has embarked upon. It concerns the restoration of a severely degraded coastal landscape where fire prone grasslands with extremely poor biodiversity and many landslides and erosion impact the condition of the coastal coral reefs. Here we create sustainable jobs for the local people, bring back biodiversity, restore coral reefs and sequester vast amounts of carbon dioxide in the form of the new forests and biochar. Additionally we are in the process of setting up a very advanced online monitoring system that promises to become a new standard for transparency in what forest restoration can mean for our people, planet and the climate. Here is a picture of the Temboan landscape that we are now reforesting:
Willie Smits
Tomohon, 20/3/2021
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