REFORESTATION
We plant trees.
But that’s only one way Trees, Water & People (TWP) works toward healthy forests and landscapes.
In the ongoing effort to protect and enrich the world’s forest resources, planting trees gets a lot of attention. It’s easy to understand and support because it’s something most of us can do, and it’s generally a good thing to undertake. Planting trees is an act of healing, for both the planter and the earth.
But when we talk about reforestation, or restoration, there are so many other aspects that TWP is concerned about. What are the right trees for a given situation or environment? What do local people want and need on their landscape? What led to a need for trees? What do Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Western science say?
Planting trees in a changing climate is challenging. The impacts from climate change mean drastic variations in precipitation, increased frequency, size and intensity of wildfires, a drastic depletion of seed sources, and the degradation of soil health. Invasive species thrive in these conditions, and require mitigation and removal before habitat can be restored.
Climate change has forced us to reckon with difficult truths about how difficult it is to recover after severe environmental degradation. Seedlings have a harder time surviving and getting reestablished, and different environments require different tactics for re-establishing native plant life. The amount of work it takes to turn seedlings into a mature stand of trees is much more than meets the eye.
That’s why we take an integrated approach to forest health - starting with community needs and concerns, and proceeding from there. Many communities we work with have cultural uses for trees and forest resources, and want to ensure their availability for future generations. Others work to protect ancestral stands of forests managed by Indigenous peoples for centuries, and which are under continual threat. Some are trying to rebuild and restore forests after high intensity forest fires.
All typically plant trees as part of a greater restoration effort.
TWP lends its support to all of these priorities and approaches.
One of our principle lines of work since we were founded has been the design, manufacture and distribution of fuel-efficient clean cookstoves. Among numerous benefits our stoves produce, is the reduction of firewood consumption by half. This means means that if a family used 10 mature trees per year to cook on their traditional stove, with our designs they’d use five. This prevents about 3 tons of CO2e from being emitted into the atmosphere per stove, per year.
Just think, that the thousands of stoves we install per year, prevent hundreds of thousands of mature trees from being harvested, and tens of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide emissions from being emitted per year - all through efficient firewood cooking.
TWP was founded by two foresters in 1998, who saw planting trees as a tremendous opportunity to meet community needs and improve forest health. In the decades since then, we’ve seen climate change intensify, community’s needs shift, and urgency increase. But we know we need to think long-term to be successful, and look at tree planting as one part of a much bigger, and more comprehensive strategy to produce healthy landscapes.
We’re glad you’re here to see it through with us.
With the help of our partner AHDESA and Maestro Fogoneros (master stove builders) like Marvin Saravia we are able to build thousands of clean cookstoves and cut wood consumption by half.
Gift of a Tree
Offset your lifestyle and go a little greener by planting a tree through our reforestation projects in Central America and on U.S. Tribal Lands. Planting trees sequesters carbon and reduces greenhouse gases, improves air and water quality, reduces soil erosion, creates wildlife habitat, and enhances ecosystem resiliency while engaging the local community in the protection of their lands. $25 - $100
Bank transfer donations take a few days to process, you will receive your tax receipt email once it goes through.
This past weekend (May 15th), the TWP Staff, TWP Board and some incredible volunteers planted 300 Ponderosa pine in Monument Gulch. The Monument Gulch/Poudre River watershed was extremely impacted by the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire.