We can all be proud to have planted 35,000+ trees in the past six months in the Rio Sol Biological Corridor project. Here are a lot of photos of the last two weeks of planting and a bit of story too. The video below shows the love each tree is planted with.

Introducing the Rio Sol planting team minus Daniel Spreen. He is a part of this amazing team and works beside them all day. They’ve been planting since last June.

Jimmy Acosta Elizondo, LRFF’s Field Director

Deibys Villalobos Sibaja

Chavo, Argelio Garcia Talavera

Allan Hernandez Mendieta

Favian Solano Quiros

Otoniel Acosta Elizondo

And last but not least………..

Esteban Mojica Miranda, the most glamorous of the team

The crew began planting the last 4000 trees on Monday January 16^th at Moncho’s property on the Rio de la Muerte. The nearest road to the property was on the other side of the river. Barbed wire and staples for the fencing, 2000 trees to and all other equipment had to be carried across and down the river to the planting site.

Daniel and Deibys crossing with their daily stuff

Chavo, Deibys and Jimmy with rolls of barbed wire

At this particular place along the Rio de la Muerte the local fish, Sabalete, abound. The first day, after work, the guys caught a large one. Jimmy took it home to cook in the traditional Maleku way and bring for lunch the following day.

The next day Deibys girlfriend Jasmine, Martha her mother and grandmother came to work with the team. They’d heard about the fish caught the day before……….

The women pulled in another big fish. Jimmy got a fire going and they all feasted on fresh roasted fish that afternoon.

Barbecued fish on a natural platter

The team had over 700 meters of fence to construct for the tree corridor. This took over two days, another day bringing the trees from the nursery and across the river and the last day and a half was spent planting the trees.

Before the planting began Jimmy asked us to bring him a carpenters apron to put the staples and hammer in while they constructed the fence. We didn’t have that kind of apron so I gave Daniel my kitchen apron with a pocket and told him to give it to Jimmy the next day. Jimmy wouldn’t wear it but Deibys was more than happy to. <:D Later they told me they just don’t know what happens to them out there planting trees. From the photo below and the one of beautiful Esteban above in his exquisite corset you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

Deibys in my apron second from left

They finished Moncho’s on the 20^th and would begin Isidro Blanco’s property on the Rio Sol in Palenque Margarita on Monday.

Isidro’s fenced restoration area

This time they only had to construct 100 meters of fence, that’s always the first step in a planting area to keep the cows and horses out. The next step was carrying the trees from Isidro’s nursery near his house to the planting site. Look at how these trees move…..

Let’s take a break and have a look at some of the nature photos Daniel took during the planting.

Green Honeycreeper feeding from unknown vine fruit

Jacobin and fruit cups

The team found this vine winding up in a large tree. It was flowering and fruiting. The fruits were deep cups that, when ripe, open at the top and are filled with a sweet juice. We drank the nectar from the cups and it was GOOD. If anyone knows what this vine is or even the family please let us know. We’ve never seen it before.

Jacana in a swampy area

Warbler in Manzana de Agua tree with flowers

Red-winged Blackbird

Daniel left on Monday mornings and stayed in Guatuso until Friday after the team was paid. He took a few photos of his favorite restaurant and downtown Guatuso…….

The best restaurant in town, al fresco

Downtown Guatuso

Back to the planting…..the fence was built on Monday, the trees hauled to the site and some were planted. On Tuesday the team finished the planting and began on Jimmy’s families property. Their property is next to Isidros along the river.

Isidro Blanco’s after planting, along the Rio Sol

The other properties had cattle but Jimmy’s never had cattle consequently all of the huge grasses and banana like plants had to be chopped. The crew spent all of Tuesday, Wednesday and part of Thursday chopping with machetes to prepare the land for planting. They found four Fer de Lance on that 1 ½ hectare piece! Very dangerous work.

The crew chopping at Jimmy’s in Palenque Margarita

The crew with Daniel in Palenque Margarita

All of that chopping and snake danger plus it being at the extreme end of the Rio Sol project wore that old team of guys out. They didn’t let that bother them and acted accordingly…………..

Esteban jumping in the Rio Sol in Margarita

He hits the water!

Visiting after work. Do you think they’re planning the next day’s work, HA?They DID however plant 1500 trees at Jimmy’s families property

Lunch on the Rio Sol

They were even snoring on Amanda’s porch in Margarita

Amanda, Nécasé is her true Maleku name, is Jimmy’s sister. She lives on the property in Palenque Margarita. Her house, as you can see above, became the informal “office” of the planting team.

Nécasé in her workshop on the Rio Sol. This is where she creates her Green iPhone speakers for LRFF

Deibys on the phone in his office while Esteban waits with a load of trees on his head

Finally payday comes on Friday at Nécasé’s rancho

The team planted the last tree in the Rio Sol Biological Corridor at 9:00 am on Friday the 27^th of January. We realized in the end, by seeing the entire project as a whole in our minds, that we had planted a continuous corridor on the Maleku side of the Rio Sol from Lillian and Julio Tinocos property in Palenque Sol to and including the Acosta Elizondo property in Margarita. Then at Franklin Mojica’s following the upper part of the Rio Sol and up into Viento Fresco at Marvin Castro’s which is on the banks of the Rio Sol near the source.

One last team photo with Jimmy, in front of the “office”

Daniel with a beer on his head, celebrating

Exiting after planting 35,000 trees in that little car, Joya

Are you proud of what you have done yet? If not you most definitely should be because without all of us putting our energy together, willing the restoration of our Earth, it wouldn’t get done Thank you each and every one of you for your support and positive energy this past year as we strove to implement this project. Thank you to Pierre Andres and etnies shoes for your generous donation for the trees. Thank you to the amazing Rio Sol planting crew, especially you Jimmy, “hasta la muerte”. Thank you to all the volunteers that have come on board this past year and the GREEN group for their most recent supply of volunteers and tour groups at La Reserva.

We have more projects ready for planting this year again, so far 15 hectares. Watch for those, out in Guatuso as well and………………

LET’S GET PLANTING!!

This little Blue Jeans Dart Frog is singing about the good things to come soon in the second phase planting of the Rio Sol project and the progress that has taken place at some of our previous projects.

David Alvarez farm, November 27th, 2009, planting day

“Connecting Forest Islands in Costa Rica”, David Alvarez’s property, was LRFF’s first project on Global Giving. We won the GG Open Challenge in August 2009 because of your generosity, donating more than $4000 from 50 unique donors. Giant Studios made the final donation to fund the project in November commemorating the finish of the film Avatar that they did the image work on.

The 2+ hectares were planted the following week, bringing the total trees LRFF planted in 2009 to 10,000. Daniel and the maintenance crew have been cleaning the property for two years and we feel that one more cleaning in January will be the last. I wanted to share the progress in only two years of this project. One year ago we passed by and found cow pies in the planted area. The neighbor’s cow had broken down the fence and been eating the grass and our little trees. The fence was repaired immediately and now one year later the trees are all growing, look………….

They are up above the grass taking over

The fence running top to bottom we constructed in 2009.

If you plant it they will come and stay. In the photo above you can see the connection already from the fence line to the forest in the background. Thank you for helping us implement this successful project.

“Increasing Tenorio Volcano Forest” on Roy Whaley’s property is a completely different story. Another great Global Giving project that many of your supported in donations and/or volunteering. We planted Roy’s 1 ½ hectare area in June 2010 with 1800 native trees of more than 70 species.

The maintenance crew has returned every three months to clean the trees and always finds a large percentage “disappeared”. While part of the crew cleans the trees others replace trees that haven’t survived or “disappeared”. But, alas, three months later when they return those same trees and others are completely gone without a trace, not even a little stick left.

Daniel has puzzled over this and last week when the crew returned to Roy’s it was the same story. The soil is extremely depleted from cattle grazing and it has a steep incline so that whatever nutrients are in the soil run down with the rain to the depression below where Roy’s compound is. Dan hasn’t taken any photos of Roy’s because he feels it is a failure but it’s important to share every part of our work with you.

Dan picked up a truckload of large trees and delivered them to Roy’s while the crew cleaned that day. We will return again at the beginning of the year but in the meantime Roy’s worker will be planting these new trees. We will keep you posted on this mysterious tree mortality problem at Roy Whaley’s farm.

Planting Project Hometree, September 2010

This past month Omar, Miguel and Kyra Hagl cleaned and replaced trees here at La Reserva for Project Hometree. Above you can see the furrows the planting crew cut in the deep African grasses to prepare the 8 hectares for planting last year. This is a labor-intensive project, preparing the land and now the maintenance. Miguel and Omar worked at cleaning and replanting for three weeks. Kyra Hagl arrived the last week and was a grand help planting replacements while the guys concentrated on the cleaning.

Miguel Herrera, me, Omar and Kyra, toasting the last day with beers

Project Hometree, October 2011, one year after planting

You can still see the furrows above but the trees are now taller than the grasses. We have one more year of maintenance on Project Hometree, this is a very successful project. In the majority of the planted areas the trees are growing at an amazing rate. There are lenses in the soil in all of our project areas where the trees just don’t grow well or not at all. Even the pasture grasses don’t do well. These lenses are usually a very fine-grained, red clay. Now that leads us to the next story………

The Rio Sol Biological Corridor with our family, the Maleku. In Guatuso, where the three villages are found with the Rio Sol running through, the soil is sticky gray/brown clay. This is one of the most fertile agricultural areas in Costa Rica and the growth of the trees planted in June is astounding. Here is a photo that our on-site supervisor Jimmy Acosta Elizondo took with his little cell phone. No matter it is blurry, you can see the trees growing against the brighter green of the recently cut rice.

Lillian Tinoco’s fenced and planted 15 meter strip along Rio Sol

Lillian’s 1 hectare corridor along the Rio Sol has actually been a real pain in the neck but look at those babies grow. On planting day last June the planting team found they were unwelcome when they entered the property to plant the 1000 native trees. Julio, Lillian’s son, mistakenly rented the entire farm area to a local rice grower to plant rice. When the team arrived the rice farmer told them they couldn’t walk back and forth across the newly planted field much less haul the trees to the planting area from the truck with horses. The rice farmer is our friend and is a great supporter of the project. I talked to him, promising the horses would follow the same track through the field each time and the rest of us would only walk on the un-planted borders of the field. He agreed and Lillian’s was planted.

The rice grew and grew. Last month was harvest time and we went with Jimmy and the rice farmer to have a look at the baby trees. Most of the trees had grown taller than the rice already and the rice was above our wastes. We all agreed that Jimmy would find 10 workers to cut the rice by hand with machetes in one day, harvest day, to keep the heavy machinery from cutting the baby trees and running them over with the huge wheels. Above you see the corridor safely fenced, the rice cut, the baby trees cleaned and the ones that didn’t survive have been replaced. Great work, Jimmy.

Felix (Moncho) Mejia’s nursery, ready for the second phase planting

Above is just one of the 22 community nurseries at the Maleku Reserve. Moncho is participating with almost two hectares of his farm and is growing 2000 trees in his nursery. On November 17^th the inventory will be taken of all nurseries, the quantity of trees and species type in each. We bring these numbers home and start writing checks to the nursery keepers and making our new tree species list for this phase.

We have 21,000 trees to plant starting at the end of November and continuing on until we are finished. Volunteers are very much needed for this project. Funding is short and we must be able to plant these and then maintain all 35,000 immediately afterward.

See, the little frog has a lot to sing about. Keep watching and listening, even greater news is yet to come. But in the meantime we’ll be…………………..

PLANTING TREES AND SPREADING SEEDS!

KC Woods, newest member of the LRFF/US board

Just got back from looking at the Rio Sol Biological Corridor project today and couldn’t wait to show you the great news, but I will restrain myself from confusing you by starting at the beginning. Almost one month ago KC Woods and his dad, Ken came to La Reserva for a visit. KC said he needed to see first hand what we are doing here since being elected to the LRFF/US board. We went to the Maleku Reserve to see the trees planted thus far in the Rio Sol project. We were amazed at what we found! The trees had been planted only 2 ½ months earlier and were growing, no thriving. But wait, this is about forests and people. Here are the people working to restore forests for you.

Rebecca Bell, Jimmy Acosta Elizondo and Daniel Spreen Wilson

Rebecca Bell Continue reading →