Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Wednesday 2 OctOber 2019
Restoring forests 1 tree at a time, to help repair climate

By CHRISTINA LARSON Now Michael French, di-
AP Science Writer rector of operations for the
MADRE DE DIOS, Peru (AP) Kentucky-based nonprofit
— Destruction of the forests Green Forests Work, and
can be swift. Regrowth is his colleagues are collabo-
much, much slower. rating with the U.S. Forest
But around the world, peo- Service to restore native
ple are putting shovels to Appalachian forests and
ground to help it happen. the rare species they sup-
They labor amid spectacu- port — by first tearing down
lar recent losses — the Am- other trees.
azon jungle and the Congo Green Forests Work has re-
basin ablaze, smoke from forested around 800 acres
Indonesian rainforests waft- within the Monongahela,
ing over Malaysia and Sin- and it is taking a similar
gapore, fires set mostly to approach to other former
make way for cattle pas- mining sites across Appa-
tures and farm fields. Be- lachia, having reforested
tween 2014 and 2018, a around 4,500 total acres
new report says, an area since 2009.
the size of the United King- — Maria Coelho da Fonse-
dom was stripped of forest ca Machado Moraes, nick-
each year. named Dona Graça, runs
Rebuilding woodland is a tree nursery that grows
slow and often difficult seedlings of species native
work. And it requires pa- to Brazil's lesser-known jun-
tience: It can take several gle — the Atlantic coastal
decades or longer for for- rainforest.
ests to regrow as viable She collaborates with a
habitats, and to absorb the nonprofit group called
same amount of carbon A bulldozer knocks down non-native trees in Monongahela National Forest, W.Va., on Aug. 26, Save the Golden Lion Tam-
lost when trees are cut and 2019. arin, which works to pro-
burned. Associated Press tect and restore the forest
And yet, there is urgency habitat of the endangered
to that work — forests are usually, they economically an easy solution to climate the Amazon, including the namesake monkey. "The
one of the planet's first lines benefit the people who changes could distract giant shihuahuaco, and Atlantic rainforest is one of
of defense against climate live nearby — for instance, people from the range and tested different fertilizers. the planet's most threat-
change, absorbing as by creating jobs, or reduc- scope of the responses Since the project began ened biomes, more than
much as a quarter of man- ing erosion that damages needed. three years ago, the team 90 percent of it was defor-
made carbon emissions homes or crops. But all agree that trees mat- has planted more than 42 ested," said Luis Paulo Fer-
each year. The impact could be great: ter. And in many places hectares (115 acres) with raz, the nonprofit's execu-
Through photosynthesis, A recent study in the jour- around the world, people native seedlings, the larg- tive secretary. "What is left
trees and other plants use nal Science projected that are working to revive them: est reforestation effort in is very fragmented."
carbon dioxide, water and if 0.9 billion hectares (2.2 —In a region of southeast- the Peruvian Amazon to As she nears 50, Dona
sunlight to produce chemi- billion acres) of new trees ern Peru called Madre de date. Graça says she is furious at
cal energy to fuel their were planted — around 500 Dios, forestry researcher —After miners left West Vir- what has happened to the
growth; oxygen is released billion saplings— they could Jhon Farfan inspects lands ginia's Cheat Mountain in forest, which was whittled
as a byproduct. As forests absorb 205 gigatonnes (220 where the forest has al- the 1980s, there was an ef- down to allow for the urban
have shrunk, however, so gigatons) of carbon once ready been lost to illegal fort to green the coal min- expansion of Rio de Janeiro
has an already overloaded they reached maturity. The gold mining. ing sites to comply with U.S. and other cities.
Earth's capacity to cope Swiss researchers estimated After cutting and burning law. The companies used And so, between feeding
with carbon emissions. this would be equivalent to centuries-old trees, min- heavy machinery to push her chickens and raking
Successful reforestation about two-thirds of man- ers used diesel pumps to upturned soil back into the leaves, she grows seed-
programs take into ac- made carbon emissions suck up deep layers of the place, compacting the lings of rare species. She
count native plant spe- since the start of the Indus- earth, then pushed the soil mountainside with bulldoz- mixes limestone and clay,
cies. They are managed trial Revolution. through filters to separate ers. The result was soil so places it in plastic nursery
by groups with a sustained Other scientists dispute out gold particles. To turn packed in that rainwater bags and plants seeds in
commitment to monitor- those calculations, while gold dust into nuggets, they couldn't seep down, and them; she irrigates them
ing forests, not just one-off some fear the theoretical stirred in mercury, which tree roots couldn't expand. with water and cow urine.
tree planting events. And promise of tree-planting as binds the gold together but Companies planted "des- Local replanting efforts —
also poisons the land. peration species" — grasses which aim to reconnect
Left behind are patches of with shallow roots or non- fragmented parcels of for-
desert-like land — dry, san- native trees that could en- est — often use the seed-
dy, stripped of topsoil and dure, but wouldn't reach lings from Dona Graça's
ringed by trunks of dead their full height or restore nursery.
trees. the forest as it had been. She does this, she said, for
Last December, Farfan and On Cheat Mountain and posterity.
other scientists with the Pe- at other former mining sites "In the future when I pass
ru-based nonprofit CINCIA across Appalachia, more away ... that memory I tried
planted more than 6,000 than a million acres of for- to leave for the people
saplings of various spe- mer forests are in similar ar- is: It's worth it to plant, to
cies native to this part of rested development. build," she said.q