Restoring tropical forest by planting tree islands 

You Guys are the real heroes of the human-kind.

We only used four species in this study since the main focus was on trying to understand how well those species facilitate the establishment of a diversity of species. But, I strongly recommend planting a greater diversity of trees and have done so in more of a recent study. And, of course, mixing in some fruiting trees is a good idea, though we found that the species we used attracted a lot of frugivorous birds and bats despite 3 of the 4 species being wind-dispersed.

APOYO TODO PROYECTO DE REFORESTACIOM, Y PRESERVACION DE LA SELVA TROPICAL, Y TODOS SUS MARAVILLOSAS RIQUESAS QUE NOS DA, Y VITAL PARA EL PLANETA, CON TODA SU BIODIVERSIDAD, DE FLORA Y FAUNA, MI CORAZON ESTA CON USTEDES, LOS ABRAZO DESDE ARGENTINA.

I wish I could find a job doing this for a living.

Hello Dr. Holl, I'm very proud of your work and your team. Great video and thank you for sharing this amazing project and its contribution in the quest to save our tropical forests.

You could use tree islands as part of silvopastoral system although they wouldn't spread due to the grazing. I've seen various planting arrangements used in silvopastoral systems, the most common being planting strips of trees along waterways and fencelines. You can use whatever species you want. We used a mix of two species that are commonly planted in shade coffee and two that are used more for timber, but one could use fruit-bearing natives. Leuceana is used a lot in silvopastoral system since it sprouts back from grazing.

Hello Dr Holl. I work with ecological restoration and natural regeneration on a costal swamp forest in Rio de Janeiro city. It's a 16 years project. Great video and great work you and your colleagues are doing in Costa Rica. Really inspiring as said by Ingo on his comment.

As a cattleman I am interested in whether you can use the tree islands as part of a deliberately designed silvopastoral system? Are mixtures of the fruit bearing natives with legumes such as Leuceana or Erythromycin or Calliandria feasible?

Great work, Karen! Thanks for sharing and inspiring!

I live in Santa Cruz! I would love to be able to work on some sort of reforestation project somewhere around the world

Bravo - Excellent Learnings - With Respect from 🇨🇦

Impressive work. Please share the research paper in this regard.

Appreciate your work

Great work team. Really informative and inspiring. Thank you.

Hi Karen & Team. Great job! I've been playing around with low effort restoration initiation on grassy degraded neotropical farmland. Assisted regeneration was really the only way to go. I found that Micro-plantings of an initiating nucleus consisting of, e.g., a fast growing N-fixing Erythina/Inga core with a bat- and bird- attractive periphery of e.g., Cordia, Cecropia and (non-native) Syzygium allows long range dispersal into the nucleus from forest remnants and even copses as much as 5km away. Even relatively heavier seeds like Virola were transported. I also found that the lower I could get the initial canopy to close

My dream job.

(Continued)...the faster the succession diversified. Hand seeding under a newly closing canopy with "keystone" type primary and sub-primary species was very effective in accelerating things in the medium (5 year) term.

Thankyou Karen for your good work Karen! :)

Thank you for your research. It can help save the world from greenhouse gas warming

thankyou for sharing this!, i cant wait to be in the field

Your suggestion is right to talk to local farmers or experts at tree nurseries about the best species and planting methods. I haven't worked in the northern part of the country and don't know what elevation you are at so I can't really recommend species. I also recommend giving the land a couple of years to see how much natural regeneration you get in the former pasture land. The cheapest way to reforest is often to let it regrow naturally. Then plant species that don't colonize naturally or in areas that regenerate more slowly.

important issue, I hope you would expose the results of similar experiments

Greetings from Panama. I wish one day i get earn my living though reforestation and preservation proyects in Panama.. Our country has a lot of impoverished lands because of cattle farming and that affects abruptly the wildlife... and everything to be honest.

Very useful, thank you! We'll have to try this out

how many tree species do you use? don't forget about the fruit trees for the bats monkeys, birds and so on

I am doing some small experimentation at a hobby level. What is your opinion on island size and percent island area to test area considering to be economical of time and money? Have you tried incorporating soil seedbank from mature forests into the islands to increase biodiversity? If so, I'd love to know the process to collect and then plant the soil seedbank. Any articles you can recommend on planting tree islands?

Dr Holl. I recently purchased a little over 4 hectares in N Costa Rica (above Lago Arenal). It’s currently about 25% rainforest and 75% grassland, likely from prior agricultural or grazing usage. I’d like to restore the trees as much as practical and this approach looks ideal (in fact I had planned to try it on a lark and ran across your clip). Do you have a link to more specific how-to suggestions? I’ll consult with local experts on the best trees. I’m curious about specific methods (getting into the weeds, if you’ll forgive the joke). Thank you.

Very interesting thanks :) I wonder though if you had been using the land to live how that would affect the results. For example with the control land, those grasses could have been useful and when removed left space for more saplings. Anyway, brilliant job :D

I have seen videos of the Nature Conservancy using the island restoration technique for riparian habitat in north america. Is it safe to assume island restoration would work with coastal live oak woodlands in california? I’m not so sure or it would take a life time or more, which is too long.

🥰

Do you have any advice for people who want a career in tropical Forest restoration? I really want to become a tropical Forest restoration manager in the future

Go slugs!