Restoration Progress: our visit to Antioquia

One year after our land acquisition in Antioquia, Colombia, we have finalised the first stage of restoration. We visited the land and can already see the immense progress.

Follow our team around the Managua and Bengala properties.

The first stage of Assisted Natural Regeneration was to protect the land from disturbances, remove cattle, install surveillance for preventing human and cattle encroachment, and repair or install fences. When necessary, our local team implemented restoration activities with different strategies: native tree planting with different plantation densities, green corridors, and enrichment. These activities covered around 10% of the land, the rest recovering itself from removed disturbances.

Green corridors were created by distributing 400 trees in 20m-wide strips with trees planted every 4m in each hectare, in order to unite stretches of forest and to link areas with similar characteristics (see image below). Each type of intervention involves a combination of natural regeneration and planting 19 varieties of native trees, such as wild cashew trees (Anacardium excelsum) and mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla).

Full ecosystem restoration does not only address fauna and flora. It includes other natural resources such as water. The project area has multiple water resources which in the past supplied a rural aqueduct. Rural community aqueducts are publicly managed and have a community approach, enabling the flow and channeling of water resources, specifically for local consumption.

The micro-watersheds that supply the rural aqueducts are part of a small geographic area, where the water flows through drains with a main exit called spring or source. Micro-watersheds are of vital importance for the development of ecosystems, communities, settlements, and, therefore, the country.

While we usually think of water as bodies of water, there are two types of freshwater on earth: blue water (rivers, lakes, etc.) and green water (plants, soil, rain). The planetary boundary for green water from rain, ground moisture and evaporation that is available to plants have already been exceeded. To avoid any further deterioration, we must protect our forests, soil and the hydrological balance of the landscapes.

While the first stage of our restoration process has already proven to be a great success, our work (and nature’s) is far from being over. In the next years, thanks to the removal of blockers, the entire ecosystem will progressively restore itself. We will continue to monitor and share this progress.

More projects involving local communities are to come, including capacity building, training opportunities and knowledge-exchange. We need to scale investments into nature restoration with speed and scale, and are currently collaborating with Aspiration to share best practices, insights and expertise.

Follow nature’s journey to building resilience through Assisted Natural Regeneration.