From ukuleles to reforestation: Regrowing a tropical forest in Hawai‘i

The volunteer-run Friends of Uplands Park Society works to restore and protect Uplands Park in Victoria, British Columbia. The members have helped native species, many of which are designated as at risk, thrive again by removing invasive species, planting more native species, and educating the community.

Bangs Circular practices sustainable beekeeping across eight communities, launching the Tiwai Honey Project, which builds hand-made beehives to support the native bee population. This practice allows beekeepers to closely monitor the bees’ well-being, thus leading to more honey production and reforestation efforts. So far, the group has trained more than 400 local beekeepers.

In October 2020, the Rhino and Forest Fund in Malaysian Borneo began to buy land once cleared for oil palm plantations, and reforests and rehabilitates the tracts into wildlife corridors. After replanting 40 tree species in the last 3 years, an increase in several threatened species has been documented traveling through the project sites.

Communities in Ecuador are building a “bioeconomy” through ecotourism and sustainable agriculture instead of relying on oil extraction. This can help protect the country’s biodiversity and increase locals’ incomes.

In Brazil, the Friends of the Amazon Forest Institute is using the Miyawaki method in its reforestation projects to see fast results. The method requires planting several species of native trees randomly in organic soil and then allowing nature to run its course with little-to-no human intervention.

Menominee tribal members are practicing methods of forest management that blend both conservation and Indigenous culture to preserve the viability of the forest long-term. In 2018, it was found that after a century of logging on the reservation, the forest had higher tree volume, higher rates of regeneration, more plant diversity and fewer invasive species than other, nontribal forests.

Plant Your Future is working with Peruvian farmers to reforest the Amazon rainforest by helping them earn an income while growing trees instead of doing so by cutting trees down. The charity does outreach, teaches farmers about agroforestry, intercropping, and the carbon market, and then supports them throughout the transition to those practices.

Volunteers of a nonprofit tree-planting initiative in Paris are planting pocket forests, based on Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki’s method, to increase biodiversity and combat extreme heat. These mini-forests are made of native species planted close together at random to mimic a natural forest.

Organizations like the Detroit Audubon’s Bird City habitat restoration initiative are planting native flowers, grasses, and trees in vacant, underused lots and parks to restore the habitat for wildlife in the city.

Rewilding Europe is a river-restoration project working to preserve rivers as biodiversity hotspots and prevent damage from human activity. Since Rewilding Europe was founded, its projects have stretched across the continent, including to countries like Spain Italy, Bulgaria, and Sweden and was recently awarded a grant of £4.1m to scale up its work.