April 2009 Update from SALVEASERRA

By Roberto Lamego - Project Director, April 13, 2009 10:39 AM

Dear donors and project friends,

Once again thank you for your support and donations that makes all this possible.

As we are about to finish our year plantation operations we want to share with you what we are do with our forests and the donated seedlings. Since 1995, SALVEASERRA recovers forests with agroforestry plantations methods in an effort to attract and convince economically land owners and cattle ranchers to protect the environment with the use of these ecological and economical possibilities that brings profits to them and avoids deforestation. As farmers have very little information about these agricultural techniques and procedures, our pilot demonstration areas are used in courses and field training programs to show students and land owners that it is possible to preserve the forest, protect biodiversity and obtain income doing things like we do. We add value to the forest with our planting methods.

All the work starts at the tree nursery and our nursery produces low cost seedlings and costs very little to maintain since it was built under the forest shade and with local materials. We have produced countless seedlings since we started planting and when we buy seedlings they are brought here until definitive planting. From the nursery the seedlings are taken to a place near the plantation areas and then separated by species before planting. Each tree species is planted in its best appropriate ecosystem condition. In our plantations, trees, palm trees and fruit trees are planted in squares that have 3 or 4 meters sides and a great quantity of new plants can be introduced in a small area. This year we opened three new areas for different agroforestry system planting plots. In two of them timber trees were mainly planted and the other one was directed to fruit trees. Remember that when you plant agroforestry systems you never stop planting and there is always room to plant something else in the same area. All plants must have an economical and ecological interest to be there and because these areas are ecologically balanced areas there are no pest attacks and ants are rarely a problem.

But maybe this is the easy part of the act of planting trees as people always forget that if we want these baby trees to become mature trees they have to be inspected and cared for at least 2 times a year and during 4 years. If you don't do this, there is an enormous chance that these very fragile seedlings will die, be it by drought, by fire, eaten by ants, crushed by branches or tree trunks, swallowed by lust vegetation or stepped up by cows. What I want to say is and it is absolutely necessary to have this always in mind, is that for at least 4 years, it is not possible to abandon these young trees after they are planted otherwise many plants will not survive and this international effort in resources and manpower to aid the environment will be useless and meaningless. I am very much concerned with this plant abandon situation because I have witnessed this happen many times here in Brazil and I would not like to see this happen with GlobalGiving Green so dearly donated trees. Donor must consider that in many situations one dollar one tree is not enough to make this sapling become a big, mature and reproductive tree.

I am writing this update in the middle of GlobalGiving's fundraising campaign, “Give a Little Green" and you can be sure that if you want to contribute, every extra dollar our project can obtain from this campaign will become a nice tree, timber, palm tree or fruit tree.

Who knows if some time donors will be able to visit the planting areas and plant a few trees with their hands?

Thank you all very much and all the best,

Roberto Lamego

The "Give A Little Green" campaign at GlobalGiving runs until 28th April. Every donation made before then is elegible for a 50% match - which means you have 50% more impact!!

There is also a "Green Challenge" running until the 28th of April - GlobalGiving Green projects are competing for additional funding. The three projects receiving the greatest number of donations will receive bounty prizes of $5,000, $2,500, and $1,000, respectively - so donate to SALVEASERRA and spread the word!!

You can also help SALVEASERRA by purchasing a WE ADD UP organic cotton t-shirt - 10% of your purchase will be donated to SALVEASERRA.

By downloading and using the How to Make a Difference Toolbar you will generate donations for SALVEASERRA - all at no cost to you!

Diversity of Species in the Rainforest

“The destruction of the rainforest comes in many shapes. And there are all kinds of animal and plant species which suffer as a result. Every hour three different types of animal and plant life are made extinct. Help us to save the rainforest: www.oroverde.de."

I discovered this wonderful ad over at Osocio.

You can help save the Atlantic Rainforest for only $2 - and every donation goes in to the draw to win a fabulous WE ADD UP 'Plant Trees' Tee!

5 Reasons to Stop Buying Products Made using Palm Oil

Want to make a difference and help save the Rainforest? Then stop buying products made using palm oil!

If you're not sure what exactly it is that's so bad about Palm Oil, you need to take a look at the list below (thanks Friends of the Earth):

1. Demand for palm oil is the most significant cause of rainforest loss in Malaysia and Indonesia.
2. Palm oil plantations destroy biodiversity and are associated with human rights violations and worker exploitation.
3. The industry could drive the orang-utan to extinction within 12 years.
4. In Indonesia, the area of land occupied by palm oil plantations has doubled in the last 10 years. This threatens species, such as the Orang-Utan & Sumatran Tiger, with extinction.
5. Serious environmental pollution is associated with palm oil processing.
   

Palm Oil is found in a surprising number of everyday supermarket products. Everything from chocolate and bread, to lipstick and detergent.

So, take the time to be a conscious consumer and avoid supporting companies that support rainforest destruction!!

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September Update from SALVEASERRA

Project 1911 update. September 2008. Things are growing, plants and ideas.

By Roberto Lamego - Director, September 17, 2008 05:22 PM

Dear donors and Project friends.

I am glad to say that the “Trees and Education Protect Rainforest in Brazil” project is running smoothly and that the plants and the ideas are growing steadily. I feel that slowly people are beginning to understand and to be more aware of the gravity of the local environmental and water situation that is taking hundreds of rural families out of their land into the cities and some to misery, poverty and crime.
The agroforestry trees in the new planted areas and the coffee plantations are now irrigated with a recently installed system that brings water from the mountain stream. Please see pictures of palm trees plantation and of irrigation of coffee plants.

School groups are visiting the Concordia Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary to spend their day in the forest and also to learn about Agroforestry technology at our Agroforestry Education Center, as did this last group of 34 students that came from a regional Agricultural State School to visit us. This “Day in the Forest” activity was sponsored by the SALVEASERRA/GLOBALGIVING Fund. See project 2239 for fund explanation and the pictures of this students group visit in Photo Gallery.

It is important to say that the project for the donation of irrigated vegetable gardens we started in the beginning of this year was separated from this one and now is on the list of GlobalGiving projects with the title: Provide Vegetable Gardens for Families in Brazil, project 2239.

Thank you all for your support and donations.

Roberto Lamego, director

Visit SALVEASERRA at GlobalGiving to read more about their project and to donate and support their good work.

You can also support them by purchasing an awesome, organic cotton t-shirt from We Add Up. I will donate 10% of the price of each t-shirt sold to SALVEASERRA. Click here to purchase now.

Or, you can help raise funds at no cost to you by downloading and using the marvellous How to Make a Difference toolbar from Conduit. Click here to download now.

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T-Shirts for Trees

WE ADD UP is a global campaign using organic cotton t-shirts that literally “counts you in” in the fight against global warming. Every shirt is printed by hand with a unique number. YOUR number represents your place in the sequential global count of all the people who are taking steps to help stop climate change. As the count grows, we demonstrate to the world that “WE ADD UP.” On the back of each organic cotton t-shirt is a word or phrase that describes an action almost anyone can take to reduce their carbon footprint - the contribution their lifestyle makes to greenhouse gases - such as, Unplug, Lights Off, Carpool, Hybrid, Bike, Buy Local, and 18 others. You choose which action you are committed to doing and get counted in. No one can do everything. Everyone can do something. And, WE ADD UP.

If you purchase a t-shirt through 'How to Make a Difference' then 10% of the purchase price goes to SALVEASERRA. And WE ADD UP donate 100% of their profit to charities working to stop global warming. And, what's more, if you purchase the Plant Trees t-shirt for only US$28 WE ADD UP will plant 10 (yes, ten!) trees in your name in the Rainforest.

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July Update from SALVEASERRA

Project update. July 2008
By Roberto Lamego - Director, July 14, 2008 04:30 PM

Dear donors and Project friends.

We continue to look after our agroforestry systems experiments and of the new “coffee under shade” plantation. Everything is growing nicely as we had a very good rain season this year. The dry season approaches and we just finish installing a new irrigation system that will enable to water with our mountain sources, all the new plants that suffer very much during the dry period, that every year seems worst. We will lose much less seedlings now and we can irrigate our coffee and fruit trees.

With the dry season we started again to receive school groups to visit the Concordia Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary and spend their day in the forest. See pictures in Photo Gallery.

At the Wildlife Sanctuary, we are preparing 4 tree days courses called “An immersion in the Atlantic Rainforest”, that will take place during this winter, two in August and two in September. Each course will be for 20 students and they will spend these three days living by a forest and feeling and learning its relationship with water production, climate and Biodiversity. They will also see the agroforestry solutions we propose to recover economically the forests and deforested land.

These environmental awareness courses are offered to our community by a Fund that SALVEASERRA created with part of GlobalGiving donations. These donations are paying for 75% of the courses costs.

This Fund makes also possible our Donation Program Project that is at this moment ending the implantation the first Irrigated Organic Vegetable Garden donated to a needed family. We expect that 3 persons can immediately work from this vegetable garden and we hope that in one year from now four families will feed and live from there, as this garden will also produce surplus vegetables and fruit for the local organic food market. This project will produce fish and ducks in the irrigation reservoir and possibly chicken in the same area.

We are looking for another person to receive a second donation. For the moment we still do not have any Tree Nursery, the other donation possibility, in sight.

See Photo Gallery for the first vegetable garden plantation and the water reservoir pavement work.

Thank you all for the donations that are making possible these good things happen in this Brazilian part of the Atlantic Rainforest region.

Roberto Lamego, director.

5 Ways to Save the Rainforest

Often described as the Earth’s lungs, tropical rainforests take in vast quantities of carbon dioxide and through the process of photosynthesis, convert it into clean, breathable air. In fact, the tropical rainforests are the single greatest terrestrial source of air that we breathe. And yet we are destroying them at an alarming rate . . .

Here's some statistics from http://www.savetherainforest.org/ :
"If present rates of destruction continue, half our remaining rainforests will be gone by the year 2025, and by 2060 there will be no rainforests remaining.
Every second . . we lose an area the size of two football fields!
Every minute . . we lose an area 29 times the size of the Pentagon!
Every hour . . . we lose an area 684 times larger than the New Orleans Superdome!
Every day . . . we lose an area larger than all five boroughs of New York City!
Every week . . . we lose an area twice the size of Rhode Island!
Every month . . .we lose an area the size of Belize!
Every year . . . we lose an area more than twice the size of Florida!
At the very least, "with the destruction of the tropical rainforests, over half the plant and animal species on earth, as well as numerous indigenous cultures will disappear forever."


So now is most definately the time to act! And every little bit helps . . . So check out the list below and find out what you can do to make a difference and help stop Rainforest Destruction.

1. Know where your food comes from
Buy locally grown food and locally produced goods whenever possible - this way you can be sure where they have come from and what effect they have on the environment. Look out for coffee and bananas that are sustainably grown.

Click here to find out more about supporting your local economy.

2. Ask questions - don't buy things made at the expense of the rainforests
When buying timber and timber products check where they are sourced from and are they grown sustainably. The same goes for paper products, food stuffs . . . !

Read more about how Palm Oil production is contributing to deforestation here.

3. Eat less red meat
Rainforest is often cut down to farm cattle for beef. Eating less red meat will help cut demand and protect the rainforest!

4. Teach your children to care for the environment
Take them hiking, camping, hunting, fishing and generally spending time in the great outdoors. Get involved in local roadside or beach clean ups. Read with them about the rainforests and find them together on a map. Plant a garden together. There are tons of ways you can have fun together with your kids while teaching them to care for and work with nature.

5. Support SALVEASERRA
Support our favourite charity. Click here to find out all about them at Global Giving. Donate if you are able or simply spread the word about the good works they do.

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