Trees Journal Issue 79

Trees JOURNAL

Past, present, future.

internationaltreefoundation.org

International Tree Foundation works every day to plant and grow trees, restore and conserve forests and strengthen community and ecosystem resilience.

Cover: An International Tree Foundation project in Northern Ghana which promotes Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, a sustainable way to restore degraded landscapes and build sustainable livelihoods.

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An introduction from the International Tree Foundation

One hundred years ago, at a time when very few recognised the importance of trees, an environmentalist had a vision to empower communities to plant trees that protect the planet and transform their landscapes and lives.

Richard St Barbe Baker spent his life advocating for trees, arguing that with too few of them the delicate balance of the planet would be destabilised. He practiced permaculture and agroecology before they were officially invented and warned of the global impact of deforestation before the science caught up. He was also ahead of his time in stressing that reforestation effort should be through local communities, in conjunction with governments and on a global scale.

In July 1922, Richard St Barbe Baker, along with Chief Josiah Njonjo, brought their vision to life in Kenya. That moment, in the shadow of Mount Kenya, saw the birth of the International Tree Foundation and its mission to plant, protect and promote trees.

Today, 100 years later, that pioneering vision of community-led forest restoration is more relevant than ever. We now know that the earth’s forests and soil absorb about 30 per cent of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions and we understand the critical role of trees and forests in maintaining climatic

equilibrium. The approaches that ITF has pioneered are now part of the mainstream. For example, the latest State of the World’s Forests report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation emphasises so many areas that we have championed for decades - from the importance of agroforestry to the livelihood benefits of forest restoration.

This year is International Tree Foundation’s centenary. And I am proud to play a small part in this charity’s remarkable history. In this edition of the Trees Journal we celebrate the beauty and wonder of trees. We look back to the past and also hear from the foresters of today about current landscapes and present efforts to restore forests.

But a centenary is also a time for us to look to the future, realistic about the scale of the challenge we face but resolute in bringing about lasting change for people and planet and we’re asking you to be a part of that future. One hundred years on, St Barbe’s ideas and actions are as relevant and vital as they ever were. But, as a planet, we are a long way from seeing St Barbe’s vision recognised.

James Whitehead is the CEO at the International Tree Foundation.

PART 1 Past

The oak

Oak trees have been on the earth since the end of the Tertiary period some 2.6 million years ago. They have grown in Britain for over a million years. As glacial conditions swept in from the north, so the oak line fell away south; over time as the land warmed and the ice-sheet melted, the oaks returned. The last return of the oaks was around 10,000 years ago, at a time when the eastern edges of these lands were still attached to mainland Europe. As the climate changed and temperatures rose, oaks spread into Britain to colonise those lands freed of ice. Animals came too and were followed by humans.

The history of human existence across the northern hemisphere is tightly tied to oaks. Flint axes were forged to fell and split oak

trees, along with pine and hazel, cut from the prehistoric forests. These were what are known as the ‘wildwoods’, which had colonised and eventually covered the land with the end of the last period of glaciation. The hardy souls that lived then used the cut wildwood to feed fires that held the winter from the hearth. The clearing of pine forest by fire and by felling also served to make more space for other oaks to flourish. Around five or six thousand years ago, people started to shift from seasonally nomadic ways to the domestication of animals and the farming of the land. Agriculture began the process of a more systematic destruction of the wildwoods to fashion the land into the first fields for planting crops and to provide grazing for primitive livestock.

Oak trees were special. They gave wood for the fire but their trunks could also be worked to form the frames of the homes that sprung up on the freshly cleared ground. And oaks offered more than merely wood. They gave acorns that could easily be gathered and stored and later eaten so that both humans and animals could feed and stave off starvation in times of famine. There is evidence from prehistoric sites across Europe that those early farmers used acorn flour as a substitute when their own cereal crops failed.

At one Bronze Age settlement near Berlin, a metre-deep store-pit was brim-full of acorns that had been ‘hulled, split and roasted’ – that is to say prepared for human consumption rather than as swine-fodder. Throughout human history, acorn flour has been used to make bread. In various communities of the world, the practice still continues.

together with twisted yew branches and made waterproof with beeswax.

Oak charcoal allowed people to progress from Stone Age existence – as charcoal produced by colliers in the oak forests fuelled early furnaces, it raised the heat to such temperatures that their fires could smelt copper and gold and tin from mineral-rich ore stone. The production of bronze was subsequently followed by further oak charcoal-fired furnaces that enabled blacksmiths and swordsmiths to work their magical ways to produce iron and eventually steel.

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Those early agriculturists settled into their landscapes and built monuments in stone and in wood. Oak-timbered circles rose from the earth as defined sacred spaces. Tannin from oak bark and galls was used on animal skins to soften the leather. Oak planks were cut and laid out to make tracks that ran for miles through swampy fens and wetlands. The first boats of the Stone Age were canoes cut from single oak logs, while those of the Early Bronze Age were formed of oak planks sewn

Wherever oak trees grow around the globe, people have developed a connection to these trees. Throughout human history particular oaks have been favoured – for their setting, for their age and size. Ancient oaks have always been special. People collect beneath their boughs. They may gather there as a place of significance within the landscape or merely as somewhere to shelter. Whereas we humans are creatures of movement, oaks are static beings. They do not shift. They are born and they die on the same patch of earth. It is that surefootedness that is so appealing. Ancient oaks hold a powerful sense of longevity. The sense of security, the sense of attachment to a place across time, enchants us. We are drawn to old oaks. You can stand beneath a grand oak and know that your more distant ancestors did so too. Oaks hold onto the memories of earlier generations. By touching the skin of the oak it is possible to feel some tentative trace of those that have gone before.

Human beings and oaks have lived beside one another as neighbours since the earliest times and we continue to do so. We no longer need the bodies of oak trees to build

Time passes. A calm creeps over me as though a blanket has been wrapped around my shoulders. A numinous peace descends.

our homes, or to fuel our fires, and we no longer need acorns to sustain us through hard years and meagre harvests. Yet on some level we still lean on oaks. In ways we do not fully understand, we need oak trees.

–I stand and stare. It is the first time I have been here alone beside The Honywood Oak, this magnificent, vast eight-hundred-year-old tree. For some moments, that is all I do. I am frozen static. Then my hand reaches out to touch the skin of the oak. I brush my fingertips, my palms against the rough bark. Something happens. I feel an ease that has not been felt within me for an age. My heart slows. My spirit stills. I glance around to see if anyone else is around. To be there in the circle of the wooden, railed enclosure by the oak suddenly feels strangely like an act of intrusion, an act of trespass into a forbidden space. I am deeply aware of the presence of the oak beside me, but also aware and concerned that someone may appear around the corner of the path through the pines. No one comes. Tentatively, I close my eyes.

Time passes. A calm creeps over me as though a blanket has been wrapped around my shoulders.

A numinous peace descends.

When I open them, there is only the oak framed before me, the grey bark ridged and still, so still. I feel bewitched. I blink and the oak now seems like a vast and languorous mammoth standing before me with an imposing, giant grace. The bark is bulbous with folds of elephantine skin and the great north-facing coppiced branch is a trunk with vast limbs planted firmly into the earth.

A hare, one of last year’s leverets, appears on the path beside the lake, all ears, lean and jittery, and trots gently up the slope towards me only to disappear into the long grasses and ferns that cover the soft slopes of the stream valley. It is a slice of time laid bare, a moment when the normal flow of life is frozen, when instead another sense of being seems to seize my presence in the world and to take a hold over all.

Buddhists call such fleeting moments satori – when the facade of our normal existence falls and we see beyond, feel the possibility of enlightenment. We live each day of our life feeling, if nominally, in control of our daily journey through life and knowing our regular path in the world. Then, in such moments of wonder, we can only stand and stare. We can no longer see the everyday. We can only feel our presence here as light as air, our feather-like existence upon this earth as ethereal and fragile as a seed head in the wind.

James Canton has taught the MA in Wild Writing at the University of Essex since its inception in 2009, exploring the ties between literature, landscape and the environment. He is the author of Ancient Wonderings: Journeys into Prehistoric Britain, Out of Essex: Re-Imagining a Literary Landscape and The Oak Papers.

A brief history of a global environmental movement

The founder and driving force behind International Tree Foundation (from 1922 to 1992, Men of the Trees) was Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889-1982), whose experiences working as a civil servant during the 1920s reinforced a sense of vocation he had experienced as a child.

Among the trees near his Hampshire home, he had felt himself overwhelmed by the forest’s beauty, his heart brimming with “a sense of unspeakable thankfulness”. Baker’s father was a forester and evangelist, and Baker himself went to Canada as a missionary. In 1910, he saw deserts in the making where trees had been felled and soil was drifting, and responded by encouraging tree-planting around homesteads and for shelter-belts; he helped develop tree nurseries on the Saskatchewan University farm.

He returned to England to study Divinity at Cambridge, and was there when the 1914-18 war broke out. After serving as an artillery officer, he returned to Cambridge in 1919, but the object of his missionary zeal had changed and he sat for the Diploma in Forestry. The Colonial Office assigned him to Kenya in 1920, where he found a troubled landscape. Arab husbandmen had invaded the forests,

removing the trees which protected the soil, while their herds of goats prevented the tree cover from returning. Now they were succeeded by European colonisers who mercilessly felled wide areas of forest.

He offered his dream of world unity and rural regeneration.

In Kenya, many tribal chiefs did not see the need to plant trees, leaving it instead to nature, while younger warriors took more of an interest in dance rituals. Baker suggested instituting a “Dance of the Trees”, along the lines of ritual dances for crop planting. Three thousand warriors came to the camp, taking their place in front of the solitary sacred tree which had been allowed to survive. He called for volunteers to plant trees and protect the remaining native forests: thus was born, one hundred years ago, the International Tree Foundation. Volunteers across Kenya planted thousands of seedlings from nurseries and helped establish a more varied bank of young trees. Baker worked with the tribesmen to reestablish forests.

During this time, he commented that the young men who helped him develop nurseries were brought up in a tradition of mixed farming and grew healthy crops without using chemical fertilisers. Such observations in time attracted Baker into the organic farming movement as it began to take shape during the 1930s and ‘40s. Baker criticised his superior officer for thoughtlessly serving “a regime which had done virtually nothing to protect the soil, forests or wildlife”, and his efforts to develop scientific resources were frequently frustrated by officialdom.

In 1924, Richard St. Barbe Baker became Assistant Conservator of Forests in Nigeria, responsible for an area the size of France, which included one of the best surviving rain forests in tropical Africa, full of splendid

mahogany trees. He noted that the prized Guarea mahoganies were never found in single stands, again drawing conclusions from this about the dangers of monoculture. He saw a forest as the perfect farming system, manuring itself and working efficiently with no need for pesticides or weed-killers. The humus-rich soil acted as a sponge, a huge reservoir which prevented flooding and released its water in the form of springs. But despite his reverence for the forest, Baker was having to issue permits to fell huge amounts of mahogany while being short of funds for reforestation. The colonial administration had adopted a purely profitmaking approach, with fast-growing exotic trees being planted for the sake of rapid timber production, regardless of ecological suitability.

Forestry as an economic science could succeed, Baker came to believe, only by aiming to approximate the conditions of the natural forests which he studied all over Africa during the mid-1920s. Recovery was possible, only, however, if it was not driven by the short-term profit motive.

Towards the end of his life Baker summed up his faith in terms of obedience to the natural order: “The fate of an individual or a nation will always be determined by the degree of his or its harmony with the forces and laws of nature and the universe”. This belief in a God-given natural order, the limits of which could not be exceeded with impunity, was a central feature of the early organic movement’s philosophy.

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The term “the organic movement”, in the context of the 1930s and ‘40s, requires some

explanation, albeit brief. Today it is likely to call to mind the idea of foodstuffs grown without the aid of chemicals and sold as premium products in supermarkets. Certainly, the organic movement has always sought to avoid reliance on products of the synthetic chemicals industry, but the reason behind this is positive, rather than negative. It is that health, rather than being the absence of sickness, is a positive energy which can be encouraged through observing the Rule of Return of biological wastes to the soil. Sir Albert Howard, the agricultural botanist and plant-breeder, spent many years in India, and used the image of the Wheel of Life to summarise his ideas. A fertile soil – one teeming with healthy life in the form of abundant microflora and microfauna (particularly earthworms) – will confer health on the plants that are grown in that soil, and on the animals and humans which consume those plants. Chemical fertilisers – the Devil’s dust, as Howard described them – could not

compensate for the lack of biological life in an infertile soil; the inevitable consequence was soil exhaustion and erosion, in turn leading to famine and social breakdown. The early organic movement was also concerned with issues such as the dangers of monoculture; the value of smallholder farmers; the importance of mixed farms; the treatment of animals; the importance of farming to the national economy and the nation’s culture; and the need to view the world ecologically and biologically, rather than through the lens of a mechanistic, industrial approach.

At the 1947 Summer School a far-sighted talk was given by Philip Mairet on “The Ecological Basis of Civilisation” – more than twenty years before the journal The Ecologist first appeared. Mairet, although neither a farmer nor grower, was a central figure of the organic movement’s early phase. He argued that Western civilisation, in its treatment of the natural world and its destruction of trees, had been drawing an overdraft on the future instead of investing in it. Rather than living parasitically on the natural world, it needed to exist in a symbiotic relationship with nature. Mairet particularly drew attention to the importance of trees in attracting, preserving and directing water, “The vehicle in and by which all living… beings are able to live or move or fulfil their functions”.

It is understandable that Howard would have been attracted by St. Barbe Baker’s outlook and activities. When ITF held their first Summer School in 1938 he was one of the speakers, and his influential book An Agricultural Testament (1940) begins with a passage in praise of nature’s farming methods, as demonstrated by forests. Another speaker on this occasion was the Dorset landowner and forester Rolf Gardiner, a leading figure in the organic movement from its earliest days until his death in 1971. One finds in the pages of the Trees Journal, established in 1936, various contributions from notable personalities of the movement. Baker was a founder member of the Soil Association when it was established in 1946 to investigate the relationship between soil quality and health.

Mairet, Howard and Baker were acutely aware that the destruction of trees and their accompanying vegetation was the first step on the road to the spread of deserts. Howard drew attention to the way in which the Romans exhausted first their own Italian soils and then those of North Africa. In 1952, Baker led the First Sahara University Expedition, whose object was to carry out an ecological survey which would estimate the speed at which the desert was advancing towards the still-fertile lands on its southern perimeter. His account of the attempt to reclaim the Sahara through afforestation programmes can be read in Sahara Challenge (1954). This project got under way three years after Baker had presented the environmentalist manifesto the New Earth Charter.

Objectively speaking, Richard St. Barbe Baker and Sir Albert Howard were representatives of colonial power. But though they were equipped with Western scientific knowledge, Howard recognised that the established practices of Asian agriculture had a lot to teach those whose task was

Baker’s combination of scientific skill and religious reverence enabled him to respect tribal traditions and see the value in rituals which would foster an attitude of stewardship towards the forests.

to improve it, while Baker’s combination of scientific skill and religious reverence enabled him to respect tribal traditions and see the value in rituals which would foster an attitude of stewardship towards the forests. Both men became sceptical about the industrial mindset which underlay the Western belief in progress, with its belief that nature was an enemy to be tamed and exploited for profit, rather than understood and worked with in obedience to natural law.

Richard St. Barbe Baker was the more radical of the two. At the end of his autobiography he offered his dream of world unity and rural regeneration; a sylvan economy rather than an industrial economy.

I picture village communities of the future living in valleys protected by sheltering trees on the high ground. They will have fruit and nut orchards and live free from disease and enjoy leisure, liberty and justice for all, living with a sense of their oneness with the earth and with all living things … then with St. Francis of Assisi we shall be able to say: ‘Praise be, my Lord, for our Sister, Mother Earth, which does sustain and keep us and bringeth forth divers fruits and flowers of many colours and grass’.

Philip Conford has written two volumes on the history of the organic movement in Britain: The Origins of the Organic Movement (2001) and The Development of the Organic Network (2011). His book about the Pioneer Health Centre and its influence, Realising Health, was published in 2020.

River Exe at Trews Weir – Sally Loughridge

The legacy of Watu wa Miti

In 1922, Central Kenya, 15,000 men from the Kikuyu tribe came together under the leadership of St. Barbe Baker and Chief Josiah Njonjo, for the inauguration of Men of the Trees (Watu wa Miti).

Nearly 100 years later, ITF’s Teresa Gitonga had the pleasure of visiting James Mburu Mathia, son of one of the founding fathers of Watu wa Miti.

As Teresa sat in the green and luscious compound admiring the rare beauty of the trees, James spoke of the cultural and medicinal value of the indigenous trees that surrounded them. He also recalled the traditional and holistic afforestation methods employed by the Gikuyu people.

“We used to sing while doing certain special activities, and tree planting is one of them. We never dug holes to plant tree seedlings from a nursery bed,” said James. “We used to plant banana plants on degraded land and leave them to grow and ripen. We did not harvest the bananas but left them for the birds to eat, and in the process of discarding the seeds through their droppings, the birds regenerated the forest.”

James welcomed Teresa to his home in Kiambu County, central Kenya with open arms, where a multitude of fruits and trees were growing and thriving on his land, “As you can see it is full of trees and vegetation – a testimony to my love of trees,” James remarked.

James’ compound is also full of indigenous trees which is surprising in this region. It is like a library where you can study and learn about different trees and their benefits. People tend to plant exotic trees and over the years knowledge on these indigenous trees has been lost.

Years after Men of the Trees (now International Tree Foundation) was founded, James’ father worked as a forest guard at Kereita Forest in the 1940s. Growing up, James looked up to his father and like most young Gikuyu men, hoped to follow in his footsteps. “He had a green badge that he was very proud of which he used to wear,” James reflected. “Unfortunately, this has been lost over the years.”

James has passed on his passion for conservation and tree planting down to his children and grandchildren. “To follow our

People tend to plant exotic trees and over the years knowledge on these indigenous trees has been lost.

tradition of passing our knowledge down the generations I have trained my sons and daughters on the importance of conserving the environment.” His granddaughter remarked, “I admire him for his love of trees. He will not accept anyone cutting down trees without a reason”.

Like James, ITF’s co-founder, Chief Josiah Njonjo went on to inspire and urge Kenyans to plant indigenous trees and restore the country’s beautiful and diverse landscape.

St. Barbe Baker greatly revered Chief Josiah Njonjo and often spoke highly of his “integrity and courageous leadership”. Over the years since Men of the Trees was founded in 1922 up until Chief Njonjo’s death, he and St. Barbe maintained a close, albeit long distance friendship.

“After we had celebrated our 90th birthday together… I asked Chief Njonjo to tell me what was his greatest ambition for the future. How

best he thought he could spend the remaining years of his life?” recalled St. Barbe. Chief Njonjo replied and enthusiastically said, “I will continue in my work of promoting planting throughout this part of Kenya. We of the Men of the Trees now have the women of Kenya whole heartedly supporting us”.

The passion and determination shown by founding members of the International Tree Foundation is deeply inspiring.

“I have loved trees for as long as I can remember. We know that trees are beneficial to human beings because they are a source of shade, firewood and clean air, and they also provide shelter and food to lots of animals and birds. I have made it my business to plant them everywhere,” said James.

Cynthia Monari is a Communications Officer at the International Tree Foundation.

“I have loved trees for as long as I can remember. We know that trees are beneficial to human beings because they are a source of shade, firewood and clean air, and they also provide shelter and food to lots of animals and birds. I have made it my business to plant them everywhere.”

PART 2 Present

The walking trees

It doesn’t feel quite right to call this giant lime a ‘tree’; it is a thicket, a tangle, perhaps even a mess. I push through the dripping crown, now strewn across the woodland floor, and explore the complex geography within. Five enormous stems radiate from their former perch on a little rocky knoll over a tumbling beck. One has broken a few metres up, twisting open to reveal great braids of wood like unwound rope. The downhill trunk has snapped clean off and sprung clear, sliding to a stop amongst the oaks beneath. The others have fallen from the base and torn the thin layer of moss and soil away from the rock as they peeled into their new, prone positions. The roots on the lower side of each are intact so the crowns are still thriving, lush with the delicate heartshaped leaves of small-leaved lime.

As I perch amongst the jumble of limbs there is a sense of dynamism and change that is uncommon in ancient woods: a gap rent in the canopy, bright limewood brought into view through torn bark, leaves and twigs set at the wrong angle. The energy and thrill of the new creeps up on me past my initial shock and sadness on finding the final two stems collapsed. This is a tree I have known for some time.

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The limes in Dodgson Wood, on the shore of Coniston Water, are famous – if that’s the right word – amongst tree nerds. They were studied and recorded by the global authority on lime, Professor Donald Pigott, and they

demonstrate beautifully, in a few dozen trees, the recent history of the species more widely. Here, they are restricted almost entirely to the ‘ghylls’, the steep-sided, fast flowing streams that channel water from the boggy fell above to the lake below. They were probably grubbed from the rest of the wood a few hundred years ago when woodland management – integral to human existence since the Bronze Age –became even more industrialised and the tree species of most use and economic value were encouraged to the exclusion of others. This is the home of Arthur Ransome’s charcoal burners and the wood is dotted with pitsteads – levelled charcoal hearths –and the stone foundations of bark-peelers’ huts: oak was big business here and, like in most woods along Britain’s Atlantic coast, it was promoted almost exclusively.

Small-leaved lime, in contrast, became redundant. Its main product had been its fibrous bast, the living wood just beneath the bark, that could be twisted into string and then plaited on into rope, clothing and other fabrics. The arrival of hemp and jute from parts of the world new to Europeans meant that lime was no longer welcome in woods being managed for things people needed – that is to say, almost all of them. In Dodgson, we think it was simply too much trouble to remove the lime on the crags and steep slopes over the ghylls, so the trees were left to do their own thing.

The arrival of hemp and jute from parts of the world new to Europeans meant that lime was no longer welcome in woods being managed for things people needed – that is to say, almost all of them.

The population here demonstrates why the species has continued, in most places, to be restricted to the edges and forgotten places – but also why it has managed to cling on. Pollen records show that small-leaved lime (along with its close relation, large-leaved lime) dominated the canopy across much of England before people started to modify the landscape. The species hasn’t naturally returned to the woods from which it was cleared because the climate cooled and the lime-seeds didn’t get the warmth they need to develop properly (until recently, of which more later). Lime has an evolutionary trick up its sleeve, however: it is highly adapted for vegetative reproduction. When old lime stems break, the trees produce masses of new coppice-growth from the stumps. When they fall from ground level, keeping the roots and crown alive, the side branches can shoot

skyward to become a row of trees while new roots sprout into the soil from the underside of the stem. The sweeping lower branches can even take root where they touch the soil, sparking close companions to standing trees.

This knack for survival has seen the last few wild populations of lime hang on despite their inability to reproduce sexually, persevering in their quiet corners as they fail, and grow: and fail again, and grow again, potentially in perpetuity. Some people call them ‘the walking trees’ and it is an extraordinary glimpse into deep-time to consider their perambulations up and down the impenetrable ghylls of Dodgson Wood. You can often read the last couple of iterations into the form of the trees you find. This middle-aged tree here can be traced, via the decaying old branch there, to that giant old veteran nearby. A row of younger trees is suspiciously straight and uniform and, upon scuffing the earth between them, we find the last spongy remnants of the fallen trunk from which they all sprang. Perhaps most pleasing is the pair connected by a sweeping limb across the beck, a living bridge. Each of these trees – although it is all but impossible to say where each individual begins and ends – is among the oldest living things in Britain. The climate cooled relatively quickly after trees recolonised our landscape when the ice receded, so each wild specimen of small-leaved lime may be a good few thousand years old, but has regenerated and transformed countless times along the way.

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The National Trust looks after more ancient and veteran trees than any other landowner in the UK (and, by extension, probably the world, due to Britain’s unique population of old trees). The ancient trees of our imagination are almost invariably the old

oaks, beeches and yews of our parklands and fields: the fat, gnarled oaks of Croft Castle or Calke Abbey, the giant overstood beech pollards of Ashridge, the Anckerwycke yew and Borrowdale’s fraternal four. Each tells a powerful tale of the human history it has both witnessed and been shaped by, and forms an ecosystem in itself of wood decay, fungi and rare invertebrates, not to mention birds, bats and mammals.

I love the oaks – and the beeches and yews –and yet I am always drawn back to our native limes. While ancient oaks seem to represent solidity and permanence, their age enabled by the durability of their wood, lime speaks to me of something more fluid and subtle, a triumph of adaptation rather than resistance. The excitement of exploring out-of-the-way spots and forgotten edges for wild lime is also undeniable and many of the National Trust woods where the species remains reflect that history of being pushed to the edge then clinging on through their amazing ability to regenerate.

Pollen records show that small-leaved lime (along with its close relation, large-leaved lime) dominated the canopy across much of England before people started to modify the landscape.

In Leigh Woods, overlooking Bristol from above the Avon Gorge, lines and groves of lime define the woodbanks lost among the oak and hazel, helping to reveal the geography of the old coppice-coupes. At Blickling in Norfolk giant sprawling limes again illuminate almost-imperceptible lost boundaries, and a straight line of ancient wild limes was even supplemented with planted common lime

to create an eighteenth-century avenue. (Common lime is, as you would expect, the lime we come across most often. It’s a nursery hybrid of small-leaved and large-leaved lime that was planted widely in designed landscapes and parklands, as well as being a popular street tree in the Victorian era.)

I feel sure there is something more to the story of small-leaved lime and boundaries. While in some places – like Dodgson Wood, or the ravine woods of the White Peak – the species was pushed back to the places where it simply couldn’t be removed, there’s no physical reason why our ancestors who worked these woods couldn’t remove lime from the woodbanks: there must have been some other reason to leave it there. Perhaps there was some specific local demand for its fibre; perhaps this is where the beehives were kept, to take advantage of lime’s abundant flowers – it is thought that lime was often retained for this reason in other parts of Europe. Perhaps, however, there was a less prosaic meaning attached to lime that we have, in Britain, lost, even in the past couple of hundred years. In many parts of northern Europe lime is held in particularly high esteem for its beauty and as a symbol of love, fertility and wellbeing. Individual trees are revered as historic meeting places and they may have represented peace between neighbours.

This potential loss of the deeper meaning that lime held for our ancestors reflects our very recent disconnection from woods and their management and with the natural world more broadly. It is only since the second world war that British woods have ceased to form an essential component of our industry and economy; the people managing them even between the wars would have presumably been able to tell us why the seemingly ‘useless’ wild limes were retained.

Perhaps the immortality of lime was, in itself, important, as the great age of yews is thought to have made them attractive as places of Pagan worship. There is some evidence to suggest that sacred groves in Iron Age Germany were of lime. Whatever meaning our predecessors found in the species, today I find a powerful sense of perspective that helps me consider our response to the crisis in climate and nature. That response is central to the National Trust’s strategy: we recognise that through the management of our 250,000ha of England, Wales and Northern Ireland we have the potential to store and sequester vast quantities of carbon and to restore and create vital habitats for wildlife.

Some of this is a new type of work for us, but like the wild lime regenerating to survive, the Trust has continually evolved throughout its 127-year history to deliver the changing needs of society. In terms of trees and woods, we’re gearing up to deliver even more great woodland management, improving the condition of our woods for the species they support and ensuring they’re

inspirational places to visit. We’ve also committed to establishing 20m new trees by 2030, improving the resilience of farmland in both environmental and economic terms as well as sequestering carbon and making space for nature. To get this right for nature and for people we need to respect the deep history of our places while also thinking about the long-term future: the continual and changing pressures that our places may be subject to and which will require lime-like responsiveness and adaptation.

Small-leaved lime will also play a part in our plans to create thousands of hectares of new wooded habitat. It is a beautiful native tree that is only under-represented in our current treescape because it declined in use for people; it is great for wildlife and will thrive in a warming climate. While climate change is too severe a threat to meaningfully talk of silver linings, one effect so far is that lime saplings are no longer absent from British woods and can be readily found across the south-east; our warmer summers mean the seeds can now develop to viability.

I am down in the ghyll among the ferns, splashing through the shallow summer flow and staring up between the great fallen stems spreading from the crag above. The broken base of the lime is already obscured by a bush of vibrant new growth, its future assured. But I want to know if this tree will walk. I have been visiting this tree for at least a decade and, to my surprise, I have watched it collapse in stages from the spectacular specimen I first met to this wild tangle beneath an open sky.

This potential loss of the deeper meaning that lime held for our ancestors reflects our very recent disconnection with woods and their management, and with the natural world more broadly.

On the bank opposite the crag, the pitstead is obscured by the crown of the great arcing stem that used to frame it like a stage. Although the branches are still alive thanks to the continued connection to the roots, none of them have settled into the earth and ‘layered’ to form new trees; the slightest ongoing movement will stop new roots forming. When I first stumbled into this changed scene it was a blow, felt as the loss of a friend. Over time I’ve come to recognise that I’m simply observing small-leaved lime’s fundamental nature and have come to appreciate the opportunity to witness its transformation in real time. I’ve also learned that it’s the instinctive reaction of the lime enthusiast to look for new growth from fallen stems and low branches when they find an old lime like this, to try to find evidence of the miraculous process of regeneration that has seen these trees persist since pre-history.

Finally, perhaps eight years after that first failure, I find it: a little grove of wrist-thick saplings striving for the light from the dry bed in the depths of the ghyll. The branch from which they’ve developed has been buried by sediment brought down by winter floods, locking it in place and enabling fine new roots to creep into the earth. The lime has taken another step, extending its toehold a few metres up the ghyll. It occurs to me that this scene has been repeating itself here since trees reclaimed these fells after the last Ice Age, and I experience a giddying sense of my irrelevant place in this tree’s deep-time story. Standing in its presence connects me to the decisions that the previous custodians of these woods have taken throughout human history - and beyond, to before the influence of people, when aurochs might have browsed the tender leaves and bears laid up in its shade. It extends the other way, too: wild limes like these will probably outlast us all and could continue to thrive here in any of the futures open to humanity. The perspective that we take from them can help us redefine our relationship with the planet and contribute to decisions that take those possible futures, and their inhabitants, into account; it should give us confidence in the actions we need to take now to be good ancestors to those who will inherit our legacy.

Luke Barley is the National Trust’s senior adviser on trees and woodland. This article, like any reference to lime, is indebted to the work of Professor Donald Pigott (both his monograph Lime-trees and Basswoods and his generosity in sharing his knowledge). Luke would also like to credit Roman Krznaric’s The Good Ancestor and The Long Time Academy podcast for helping him understand and articulate the intuitive feeling evoked in the presence of wild lime.

Conserving Tanzania’s landscapes

I am Emmanuel Stephen Lekundayo, born and raised in Arusha, Northern Tanzania but currently working for a grassroot organization in rural western Tanzania called Landscape and Conservation Mentors Organization (LCMO). Our project is community based and we operate around protected areas where we work to promote nature conservation and improve community livelihoods. We do this through environment conservation, conservation education, communitybased conservation initiatives, ecotourism, economic development and cultural activities.

I serve as Programme Coordinator for LCMO. I am also the Lead Supervisor of a community based greening programme, that works to support tree planting efforts and environmental conservation in 15 villages of Mpimbwe District Council. I enjoy nature walks and this is why I spend much of my time working to ensure that trees and the green ecosystems of Mpimbwe continue to flourish.

Communities bordering most forests and wildlife areas in Mpimbwe mainly practice farming and livestock keeping. Over recent

years, there has been increasing reliance on natural resources for both subsistence and commercial use. This has been fuelled by the rise in agropastoral immigration into the Mpimbwe area. The high need for natural resources in the area has also been propelled by seasonal food security in these areas. Trees are being felled for firewood and timber, animals hunted for bush meat, open areas overgrazed. All these have a significant negative impact on the environment. Cutting trees and overgrazing expose soils to erosion, reducing space on land suitable for human activities. The Greening Mpimbwe Project has been working with youths in villages that surround forest and wildlife areas to help share with them knowledge of how to use their local resources sustainably. We also help them restore their environment by planting more trees, especially multi-value species that help meet the needs of the communities.

My community is not sufficiently prepared for the consequences of climate change. The existing challenges, such as unpredictable rains, seriously impacts food security, livestock keeping and seriously increases the risk of outbreaks of diseases such as cholera.

The Greening Mpimbwe Campaign is an active program under LCMO that aims to uplift the quality of environment through active planting, proper maintenance of trees and the remnant natural forests within village lands in Mpimbwe District Council. We also carry out environmental education and awareness raising in surrounding villages. We hope that in the long term that this project will reduce encroachment into the remaining

forest around the village and reduce the use of wood for timber and firewood, which are the main drivers of deforestation.

Most of the trees are planted near homes, farms and in school compounds. During the tree planting season, we usually assess the needs of school and farmers and advise them on the species that are appropriate to plant in their area to address existing challenges. This is because different trees have varied benefits and so, we advise people to take trees that will suit their needs.

The biggest unexpected outcome is that all the new multi-value tree species we trailed in the area did well and the community is now very aware of the value trees. Until recently, we used to spend a lot of money transporting tree saplings to people’s homesteads and on conducting public awareness campaigns, but surprisingly over the last two seasons, most people visit the tree nurseries and pick trees for themselves.

Another notable difference is that during the infant stage of this project we encouraged people to have at least three to five trees in their homesteads but as we progressed, we started encouraging people to own tree farms. Currently we have more than 15 farmers with trees farms all supported by our tree nursery, hence there has been a huge improvement in tree planting.

These were the ideas we presented to our main funder, the International Tree Foundation. LCMO is very grateful for all the positive changes that are happening around Mpimbwe. Indeed, there is a lot that still needs to be done but the stepping stone that we have established have taken us miles ahead.

We faced difficulties at the early stages of the project, due to limited funds and

lack of technical support from local and government institutions. We saw a difference after we received our first ever grant from the International Tree Foundation which supported capacity building and the establishment of tree nurseries. This changed the project and how people viewed it. One of our key achievements is our ability to produce over 15,000 tree seedlings every season.

The project has increased the trust the community has in us, and led us to implement other projects such as beekeeping as a livelihood alternative. Some people have even dubbed us the name ‘Watu wa Miti’ which means People of the Trees. Last year we were asked to provide trees for a regional tree planting campaign. Additionally, we have been able to secure three different grants and also some international organisations have shown an interest in collaborating with us in the future.

Personally, this project has helped me grow professionally. This started after I was selected to participate in the very prestigious Mandela Washington Fellowship program and the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) at the Alumni Enrichment Institute. I was selected as a result of this project and its impact on the community.

Climate change is affecting everyone right now, and marginalised communities are the most affected. In recent times, we have witnessed how humans and other living species are struggling to survive due to historically severe droughts across Eastern Africa. While other areas like Pakistan are being severely affected by floods. Climate change has led to unpredictable seasons in our area. For instance in 2020, our area received heavy rainfall which affected food production, as most farms were destroyed by floods, some communities were

displaced, and a lot of infrastructure was destroyed. In the following seasons of 2021 and 2022, the area experienced very minimal rain which also led to reduced food production.

My community is not sufficiently prepared for the consequences of climate change. The existing challenges, such as unpredictable rains, seriously impacts food security, livestock keeping and seriously increases the risk of outbreaks of diseases such as cholera.

I would like to encourage everyone, especially the marginalized communities, that even though our voices are hardly heard, our actions can make a huge difference. Everyone can do a little by planting a tree in their home yard, farm, school or other suitable place.

Emmanuel Stephens Lekundayo is the Programme Coordinator at Landscape and Conservation Mentors Organization (LCMO) in Tanzania.

Growing Together – Natasha Matsaert

The beech tree

I love beech trees, and not just because they grow naturally almost everywhere in Europe and would form primeval forests. No, beech trees are the “family people” among the trees. They support each other through root connections and send each other sugar when one member is weak and sick, and they warn each other through chemical and electrical communication when an enemy is approaching (such as bark beetles or deer).

Alexander von Humboldt already knew about another amazing property of this treesociety that is currently gaining importance for us humans: Intact old forests cool down strongly in summer by evaporation of water, just how strongly is shown by current satellite research. Compared to agricultural land, this cooling can be as much as 10°C, and even as much as 15°C compared to cities. And as if that were not enough, forests create clouds. Over old deciduous forests, it rains significantly more than over pine plantations or treeless land. Nevertheless, even in such forests, climate change is making them drier. But the beech trees are obviously learning. In the last dry summer of 2020, for example, a number of beech trees lost their green

foliage in a shocking manner at the beginning of August, but this year, which was even drier, at least in Germany, the trees remained predominantly green. They had learned to be more sparing with the water reserves that were still stored in the soil from the winter, and were thus able to survive the summer.

A social attitude, mutual support, a positive influence on the local climate, lifelong learning - I would like to see all this in human society as well. Until that time comes (and I am optimistic about that) we should take the help of the trees by letting them grow in wild forests.

In this sense, I am very happy about the 100th birthday of the International Tree Foundation as a friend of the trees - may at least another hundred years follow!

Peter Wohlleben is the author of several books about the natural world, including The Hidden Life of Trees. A long time former forester, Wohlleben runs a Forest Academy in Germany that supports sustainable forest management and teaches adults and children about the many wonders of the forest.

Kenya’s forests and community ownership

Tree cover in Kenya now stands above target at 12.13 percent according to the National Forest Resources Assessment (NFRA) Report 2021. Among the factors that contributed to the attainment of the 10 percent target was the reclamation of over 55,000 hectares of encroached forest land across the country.

Kenya’s forest cover is currently at 8.83 percent up from 5.9 percent in 2018. However, forest cover is unevenly distributed across the country, with the central region, parts of the western and the coast being the most forested parts of the country. Nyeri has a staggering 45 percent. While at the other end Marsabit has just 2 percent forest cover.

Role of forests

Forests provide essential goods and services such as wildlife habitat, biological diversity, water catchment, climate amelioration, support construction industry, fuelwood, employment opportunities and livelihood sources. Forests and trees play multiple functions in contributing to the livelihoods of communities, especially that of women and marginal groups, in supplying food and rural energy. However, these forests are threatened with agricultural expansion, over-exploitation and unsustainable use of forest resources. Population increase and

widespread youth unemployment have led to increased pressure on forest resources.

Between 1980 and 2000, Kenya lost nearly 50% of its forest cover. Some 300,000 hectares of forest were destroyed due to intensive logging, charcoal production and large-scale clearance of wooded areas for tea plantations.

Connection with forest

I was born in a community adjacent to the forest, about 3 kilometres from the edge. In my young age we could identify with the beauty of natural forest canopy every time an opportunity arose to visit the forest. Forest cover outside the gazetted forest was quite high, supporting clean rivers and streams. While in lower primary school we used to learn up to lunch hour and in the afternoons, we used take the livestock for grazing in the areas that were not cultivated. This gave us quality time to explore nature and interact with surrounding ecosystems. This is what attracted me to the forestry sector; my love of nature. I have grown a passion for environmental issues as they are key to the survival of mankind.

Changes in forest management approach

Forest cover and management has changed over time in Kenya. Prior to 1895 when Kenya was declared a British Protectorate, forest cover was very high, as few areas had been converted to agriculture and settlements. Forests were controlled through a system of traditional rules and rights with resources belonging to individual indigenous communities who governed them using traditional systems. For most communities, the rules were enforced by a council of elders, who through sanctions and fines, ensured the sustainable use of communal tree and forest resources. The population was quite low with families having expansive areas that they could use for agriculture and pasture for animals, leaving most areas under natural vegetation. Communities would get all their fuelwood supplies from the trees within their landscape. Forests were then considered to be part and parcel of the community landscape.

Forest conversion in Kenya began with introduction of cash crops like coffee

and tea, when large tracts of land were cleared to create space for the crops. Land partitions that introduced private ownership of land contributed to further destruction. The emergence of towns and cities increased demand for forest products for construction and wood fuel. As this continued, the traditional governance system was eroded, weakening norms and the taboos associated with forest destruction.

indigenous communities who governed them using traditional systems. For most communities, the rules were enforced by a council of elders, who through sanctions and fines, ensured the sustainable use of communal tree and forest resources.

The introduction of forest plantations around 1910 led to more conversions of natural forest. Forests that were seen as a community resource started having a commercial value and only a few individuals could get into the forest and make an income out of selling forest produce. Gazettement of forests led to the exclusion of communities in forest management and led to the adoption of command-and-control management approach. This contributed to the loss of community ownership as they felt that forest resources belonged to state.

Between 1980 and 2000, Kenya lost nearly 50% of its forest cover. Some 300,000 hectares of forest were destroyed due to

Forests were controlled through a system of traditional rules and rights with resources belonging to individual

TREES JOURNAL

intensive logging, charcoal production and large-scale clearance of wooded areas for tea plantations.

The establishment of the Nyayo Tea Zone Development Corporation (NTZDC), first by Presidential order in 1986, and later by an Act of Parliament in 1989 also affected forestry in Kenya. Under this programme, plantations were established adjacent to indigenous forests to act as buffers against agricultural encroachment on forests designated for catchment protection. The tea plantations were also expected to generate income

and employment. This programme obtained land from the government forests. It initially targeted 20,000 hectares for tea production. By 1990, 6,000 hectares had been cleared. Tea zones were established in the high potential forest areas. According to the forest department, the establishment of Nyayo Tea Zones resulted in an estimated clearance of 6,600 hectares of forest for tea establishment. In 1989, a World Bank/FAO mission estimated a total of 11,000 hectares has been cleared. Nyayo Tea Zones were initially intended to be ribbon-like 100m strips adjacent to forest boundaries to prevent

encroachment. However, some areas have extended beyond the 100-meter limit, while others have gone as far as 500 meters into the forest.

A survey of 350,000 hectares of indigenous forest that contain Nyayo Tea Zones indicates that, 3,600 hectares (1.4%) of the forest reserves are occupied by tea. Conversion of natural forest to Nyayo Tea Zones in some places like Aberdares, made communities realise the potential of forest, leading to illegal exploitation of a resource that was once considered sacred.

and providing incentives to catalyse community and private sector investment in tree growing and conservation efforts are critical in halting deforestation and forest degradation and driving positive transformation in the forest sector.

2010: new constitution

The constitution of Kenya in 2010 brought developed governance and high standards in governance and sharing of resources. Forests, especially those within County justifications, were devolved including on farm tree growing. The forests left under national government are the gazetted forest reserves which are mainly managed by Kenya Forest Service (KFS). Counties have a key role in managing forest resources within their boundaries and enhancing tree growing including forest extension services. However, the capacity of County government in extension services is still underdeveloped.

Drivers of forest degradation

Reduced water levels in rivers and dams, declining economic activities as a result of water rationing, the loss of wildlife habitats, conflicts over water and pasture and increased soil and water erosion in catchment areas are major manifestations of deforestation and landscape degradation. Strengthening of the institutional capacities of the Kenya Forest Service and the County Governments to enable them implement their respective mandates,

Reduced water levels in rivers and dams, declining economic activities as a result of water rationing, the loss of wildlife habitats, conflicts over water and pasture and increased soil and water erosion in catchment areas are major manifestations of deforestation and landscape degradation.

Emerging forest issues Community participation in forest management under Participatory Forest Management has been adopted as modern management strategy. The community adjacent to the forest forms a Community Forest Association that enters into a management agreement with Kenya Forest Service for management of a forest. A Participatory Forest Management plan is developed by the two parties that guides its management. The forest still belongs to the national government but the community has access rights and shared responsibility in management. This has increased the community’s sense of ownership and increased their protection of the forest thus enhancing conservation.

My contribution to forestry

The current approach to forestry, which I am involved in, focuses on: Participatory Forest Management, climate change, payment for

environmental services including carbon, undertaking total valuation of forests to determine their contribution to national accounting and upscaling commercial forestry as a strategy to increase forest cover and create wealth for Kenyans.

Forests are key contributors to mitigating climate change and Kenya has developed the Reducing Emission through Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) strategy combined with the 10% forest cover strategy. The two strategies aim to increase forest and tree cover across the country. One of the key areas is, upscaling commercial forestry as a competitive land use option. Currently I am spearheading the establishment of a Commercial Forestry Investment Centre that will advance the adoption and upscaling of commercial forestry in Kenya. Payment for environmental services is another initiative that will benefit the communities participating in forest conservation by offering plough back mechanisms.

Dr. Joram Kagombe, Deputy Director and Chief Research Scientist, Kenya Forestry Research Institute.

“Today it is the duty of every thinking being to live and to serve not only his own day and generation, but also generations unborn, by helping to restore and maintain the green glory of the forests of the earth.”

ITF founder and visionary tree planter, Richard St. Barbe Baker.

PART 3 Future

Encountering wild birds

Dawn on the Seine estuary, late August. We arrive at the edge of the reedbed, packed into two cars, squashed together into a collective excitement that mingles under the roof in soft breath. We are anxious to walk off the four o’clock bleariness: to inhale the brightening air and cast fresh shadows on damp plants. Looking back down the road along which we have travelled – at the way the tarmac winds back on itself again and again – it is hard not to wonder how, at some distant point, the road itself does not forget the place it set out to reach in the first place.

We are here in the marshlands of Normandy — Emma, Dan and a team of other French and English bird ringers — to catch and ring endangered aquatic warblers (Acrocephalus paludicola) as they migrate from their breeding territories in Eastern Europe and Western Asia to their wintering grounds in West Africa. The CRBPO (Centre for Research on the Biology of Bird Populations) runs a project that monitors the numbers of migrating warblers in this region of France. As is common practice in ornithological research, the birds’ legs are fitted with metal rings that are stamped with unique identification sequences. This means that post-ringing, each bird is identifiable as an individual.

We work from first light to mid-morning; sometimes we catch over a hundred birds in a day; often not a single one of these is an aquatic. On such days it feels as if the birds are lost: flying in strange directions,

overshooting us in the dark. Vanished to somewhere else.

The timing of this year’s fieldwork is significant: the results of Emma’s PhD research have just been published. They showed that the extinction of threatened bird species will disproportionately affect those species with the most unique morphological traits, and thus the diversity of traits across the whole avian phylogeny will shrink at a faster rate than previously expected. It is a critical discovery. Those species that tend to have the most diverse traits (and thus also provide the most unique ecosystem services) will likely go extinct first. Since the widest range of animal morphologies (and therefore ecosystem functions) is linked to an ecosystem’s resilience to environmental change, Emma’s results speak of a dramatic degradation of ecosystems’ stability at the global scale. Wading through the Seine’s tidal swell as we approach our first moments of contact with wild birds, it is impossible not to internalise this larger reality of environmental crisis.

Migration waits for no one

The expansive implications of this PhD paper have become the underlying strata of the ringing experience.

But the advancing day demands resolve: we have work to do. In silence, we follow each other through the reeds in single file, without torchlight so as to minimise disturbance. Marsh frogs; meandering; forwards momentum.

–Migration waits for no one. Nets must be set, clipboards snapped into readiness. To handle a sedge warbler (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus) that has flown here from the reedbeds of Norway is to tap into something almost too large to comprehend – a kind of worldly inevitability, a restlessness. The actual moment of physical contact with a wild bird resists the baggage of dizzying environmental

destruction. The bird in my hands diverges absolutely from any general classification – it possesses what the philosopher Jacques Derrida calls an “unsubstantial singularity”. “In the moment of encounter”, he writes, the animal presents as an “absolute divergence or separation from anything other than itself”. The bird in my hands is perpetually resistant to conflation with the colossal narrative of collective species decline. It hums, discrete, between my fingers.

It is precisely this singularity that becomes, for the human, a steadying antidote to the reality of extinction and the erasure of nature. The French theorist Jacques Lacan borrows a word from Aristotle: tuché, he says, to designate “an encounter … to which we are always called with a real that eludes us”. The meeting with the wild bird is like this tuché We are called up to it by an urgent need to monitor avian populations, to act in unison

with conservation measures implemented by the International Species Action Plan for the Aquatic Warbler. And yet, as wings, legs and bills are held against rulers - quantified - the full gravity of catastrophic species decline becomes an impossibly elusive concept.

Like Lacan’s tuché, this layer of the real is (momentarily) lost: the captured wild bird monopolises the human consciousness to such an extent that the ringer can do nothing other than feel its rapid pulse or catch for a second its blood-black eye – feel a kind of terror so profound it presents as serenity.

Seed dispersal networks highlight how intrinsically linked the natural world is, and how the loss of trees can have far-reaching consequences.

This momentary liberation must be savoured. A nine-gram body becomes, for a matter of minutes, a site of human refuge. And then the bird is released. It shoots off back into the morning light to settle and continue its journey to Senegal, Mauritania, Mali. In the moments that follow this encounter, Lacan’s tuché comes full circle: we lose the single bird in the reeds, but we re-realise, again, that we are also losing other individuals of the same species at an alarming rate, too. Collectively. As part of a trend. Each piece of biometric data we collect from the birds is added to a database; expansive databases enable the large-scale modelling of population trends that quantify the scale of extinction events. In this way, bird ringers literally construct the scientific reality that surrounds the highly charged experience of handling a wild bird. The measurements we take enable the visualisation of population dynamics and the ability to situate individual animals within a larger environmental narrative. Bird ringing – this simple meeting of two

bodies – is a confluence between the immense and the minute. –Walking, again. Mid-morning. Above, martins and swallows (Hirundines) reel southwards. Migratory crakes (Porzana spp.) flush from clumps of grass. A distant hen harrier (Circus cyaneus) flies decidedly. We are deeply privileged to be working in The Seine Estuary Nature Reserve, the second largest reserve in France. It is a crucial stopover point for millions of migrating birds every year, with over 300 species recorded here. There are also over 500 species of plants, 50 species of mammals and 70 of fish. It stands as a prime example of stakeholder collaboration: farmers and fisherman work in areas managed by the reserve; permitted hunters stake out many of the muddy pools that line the river mouth. Its existence is also a reminder of the fragility of such unifying agreements. Even here, the sometimes-divergent interests of the different players mean that the priorities for land-use are often contested.

This is a recurrent pattern in conservation. The single biggest driver of the biodiversity crisis is land-use change, the loss or conversion of natural habitats for human use. For instance, Emma’s research explains that large, charismatic, fruit-eating bird species, with unique bill shapes, such as the toucans (Rhamphastidae) and hornbills (Bucerotidae), as well as other megafaunal species such as tapirs (Tapiridae) and elephants (Elephantidae), thrive in large tracts of undisturbed, intact forest, and are often threatened by deforestation, habitat fragmentation and, consequently, poaching. These frugivores have mutualistic relationships with many tree species. The fleshy fruits provide the animals with sustenance and the trees rely on them to

disperse their seeds - so called ‘zoochory’. In fact, between 70-94% of tree species rely on vertebrates to disperse their seeds in tropical rainforests. The loss of these organisms can therefore disrupt the recruitment of new trees into the forest. For example, several tree species in West-Central African forests are facing dramatic declines because of the loss of African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) to ivory poaching. The trees rely upon the elephants to disperse their seeds.

Migration waits for no one. Nets must be set, clipboards snapped into readiness. To handle a sedge warbler that has flown here from the reedbeds of Norway is to tap into something almost too large to comprehend – a kind of worldly inevitability, a restlessness.

The loss of large-bodied seed dispersers can also have additional, less obvious, consequences. Large-seeded plant species tend to have higher wood density than smaller seeded species; only the largest bodied frugivores can disperse these seeds, and so their loss leads to a reduction in tree biomass and therefore carbon storage in defaunated forests. Seed dispersal networks highlight how intrinsically linked the natural world is, and how the loss of trees can have far-reaching consequences.

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ecosystems. By afforesting land and thereby preserving the potential for morphologically distinct species to thrive in new areas, the Foundation improves ecosystems’ resilience to future environmental change. When habitat is created and reclaimed – and a wide range of stakeholders included – large, distinct species can survive. In the summer of 2020, white storks (Ciconia ciconia) bred in Britain for the first time in over 600 years following the rewilding of the Knepp Estate in Sussex. The potential for ecosystems to recover from exploitation over relatively short time periods holds a slice of hope for the future of morphological diversity and the extinction crisis more generally.

Still, the physical act of planting a tree also speaks to something more psychological than the global imperative for environmental action. It is, like the handling of a wild bird, an ultimate instance of tuché. The planter works in view of a hoped-for future – an ecologically richer future – that (by nature) eludes the contemporary moment, the seedling that has not yet grown. As a simple, physical gesture, planting trees can create habitat corridors, counter ecological collapse and connect communities at local and international levels. But it also links the internal self to the material quality of passing time and sensitizes us to our desire to touch and manipulate the kernel of a wilder reality.

In light of this research, writing for the International Tree Foundation’s journal feels particularly important. Restoring forests and creating habitat networks is directly linked to preserving the morphological diversity of

Dan Paling is a student in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. His work is inspired by the ways that humans interact with and are connected to nature. Dr Emma Hughes is an ecologist in the School of Biosciences at the University of Sheffield. Her work focuses on the impacts of the extinction crisis on bird biodiversity.

Community restoration of the degraded landscape in Uganda

I am Wakulira Mathias, Project Coordinator for Masaka District Landcare Chapter (MADLACC) located in Masaka district, Central Uganda, 125km south west of Kampala Capital City. I am an agriculturalist, coffee and tree farmer who is in love with nature, happy to work with rural communities and their interaction with trees and crops.

My favorite tree among others is the umbrella tree (Maesopsis emiini), a native tree with a number of benefits that include; environmental, timber and an agroforestry tree contributing to income and food security with the capacity to sequester a lot of carbon over a long time. I have this tree well intercropped in my coffee farm to provide appropriate shade, especially in the dry period of the year, and I still get quality coffee beans.

My country Uganda was named the “pearl of Africa” in 1908 by Winston Churchill. Back then, the country was blessed with a good climate, characterised by generally uniform temperatures in the range of 20 to 25°C throughout the year, rich and diverse nature. There was predictable, reliable and sufficient rainfall, natural forests and food security throughout the country. However, over time, human activities and population

increase, alongside other factors have caused climate change to happen, mainly through deforestation. The country’s forest cover has reduced to 12% in 2020 from 46% in 1900. This has created an inevitable need for Ugandan citizens to contribute to the restoration of degraded landscapes through any means possible, be it planting more trees on farms and also in the degraded forest areas. With the support of the International Tree Foundation, our goal is to plant 31,600 trees; including timber, fruit and agroforestry trees species. More importantly, we want to plant trees that addresses the challenges of women and youth and people with disabilities. We also want to facilitate collective decision making and action at the household level, as well as contributing to intra-household food security and increased incomes.

When the project was designed, it involved a selected community in the project area. However, we soon realised that people outside of the target community were also coming for tree seedlings and attending some of the training. This helped us to understand that many communities had realised the deforestation problem and were seeking for solutions. The biggest change in the community was the skill transfer to our community members who have planted trees and also started to raise their own seedlings at their homes. This is very important because, at the household level, they will pass on these skills to their children who will raise and plant more trees on the farm even when the project has ended.

The country’s forest cover reduced to 12% in 2020 from 46% in 1900.

As a coordinator and a facilitator in this project, I am grateful to be part of the team that works with the farmers to plant more than 30,000 trees both at household level and in the primary schools where we work. The project has changed my perception of collective action among communities to plant trees. I am greatly encouraged to continue

to plant, and also to mobilize community members to participate in tree planting for nature and all the associated benefits. Among the trees planted at my home are fruits and other agroforestry trees. I have become a point of reference to learn from, I am also self-sustained with various fruits and can earn income by selling fruits.

Climate change is a serious challenge for smallholders; they have come to appreciate and understand this because they have experienced it. If it is not addressed, the livelihoods of the farming families will be greatly affected, and lives may even be lost because the land productivity has decreased so much. The current situation is such that some of the family members can afford only one or two meals a day. My message to the world is; climate change is real. We need to work together to address it collectively. If we do not so, in the near future, there will be no net winner. However, the opportunity to reverse it still exists because the world knows what to do and it can be done to reverse the situation.

Wakulira Mathias is the Project Coordinator for Masaka District Landcare Chapter (MADLACC), in Uganda.

Jon Mackay is an artist, illustrator and silk screen printer who works through the medium of silk screen printing in the music industry as well as widely exhibiting in galleries. This artwork was created for Wilderness Festival 2022, a boutique, multi-arts and music festival.

Protecting our planet

As the oldest international tree planting charity in the world, we have a long history of growing trees and restoring and conserving forests.

Yet our work is about much more than tree planting. We know that the relationship between people and forests determines the success of our work.

That’s why we are a community-led organisation. Meaning that the people whose livelihoods depend upon local forests are the people who decide which trees to plant, where, and why.

Our holistic approach ensures that the trees we plant grow and thrive for generations to come, restoring fragile ecosystems and repairing our planet. But it also creates sustainable livelihoods, food security and access to vital resources for the communities who plant them.

Together, with your help, we can plant trees and transform lives for the benefit of people and planet.

Join us today internationaltreefoundation.org/donate

Imagine a human culture based on the interconnectedness of a forest

Recent scientific research has demonstrated that the trees in a forest are all connected underground via their roots and the network of fungal hyphae that intertwine around them. This not only allows an exchange of nutrients to take place between the trees and fungi as part of their mutually-beneficial symbiotic relationship, but it also enables the older, more mature trees to support the growth of young trees and recentlygerminated seedlings by passing nutrients to them. This reflects, in arboreal terms, what we experience in our human lives - that we can all benefit from, and help to move forward, the vision and work of those who have preceded us.

As St Barbe said, “The simple act of planting a tree, in itself a practical deed, is also the symbol of a farreaching ideal which is creative in the realm of the spirit, and in turn reacts upon society, encouraging all to work for the future well-being of humanity rather than for immediate gain.”

I’ve had a powerful personal experience of this as a result of the two meetings I had with Richard St Barbe Baker, the founder of Men of the Trees (as the International Tree Foundation was originally known), towards the end of his life. I had joined the Findhorn Community in northeast Scotland in 1978, and he made two visits there, in 1979 and 1981, during both of which I was asked to host him for part of his stay. I already had a strong personal interest in trees, and those meetings with him provided the opportunity for me to be immersed in, and soak up, some of his vision, enthusiasm and love for

trees. During his 1981 visit he gave a keynote lecture as the climax of a week in celebration of trees that the community had organised. As an introduction to it, I presented a short audio-visual featuring my photographs of trees and forests from both the local area and other countries. When he got up to speak, St Barbe spent the first few minutes appreciating the slide show and stated that there was a need for a calendar that featured beautiful images of trees and promoted their importance to the world. He said that the Men of the Trees had formerly published an annual tree calendar, but no longer did so, and suggested that I should step into the breach and publish one!

Thus an idea was seeded, and in 1983 I began publishing the Findhorn Nature Calendar, complemented from 1988 onwards by the Trees for Life Calendar, which featured photographs of trees and forests from all over the world, together with information about any threats they faced, contact details for the organisations working to protect them, and inspiring quotes from people who were touched by trees (including St Barbe himself). Sales of the calendar provided the funding for the first major work of the Trees for Life project that I had launched in 1986 to help restore Scotland’s Caledonian Forest, when we fenced off 50 hectares of land in Glen Affric in 1990 to exclude deer and thereby enable the ancient forest to regenerate naturally. Over the following years and decades Trees for Life developed into a substantial charity in its own right, carrying out further significant restoration work for the Caledonian Forest in both Glen Affric and other nearby glens, establishing its own native tree nursery, initiating a programme of volunteer weeks through which thousands of people joined its work of tree planting, and, in 2008, taking on ownership of the 4,000 hectare Dundreggan Estate in Glen Moriston

as its flagship project for forest restoration. Along the way we received a number of awards for our work and inspired many people and other initiatives.

A passion for trees, and inspired positive action for their protection and restoration, is infectious and very clearly needed in our world today.

Just as I was inspired by St Barbe, so too has my work acted as an inspiration for others. One man who began volunteering with Trees for Life in 1991 and whom we subsequently trained up to lead our volunteer weeks, went on to co-found Moor Trees, a successful and thriving charity that is working to restore native woodland around Dartmoor. Similarly, a young woman who volunteered with us, and then later took on the coordination of our volunteer programmes, went on to found Wild Things, a charity based in the Findhorn area that organises programmes and training to enable children and young people to connect deeply with nature. The positive work of those two individuals, though their respective charities, has similarly gone on to touch many others.

Trees in a forest are all connected underground via their roots and the network of fungal hyphae that intertwine around them.

A passion for trees, and inspired positive action for their protection and restoration, is infectious and very clearly needed in our world today. At this time of rampant environmental destruction,

driven by unconstrained consumerism and a disregard for its impacts on the planet, we need a new model for human society. We need to replace competition and capitalism with something different – care for nature, a recognition of our dependence on (and symbiosis with) a healthy planet, and a large-scale (but locally implemented) programme of ecological restoration of native forests and all other ecosystems. This will involve integrating the underlying principles of how a forest functions, in terms of symbiosis, networking and mutual support for the highest good of all its species, into all aspects of our lives and culture. As St Barbe said, “The simple act of planting a tree, in itself a practical deed, is also the symbol of a far-reaching ideal which is creative in the realm of the spirit, and in turn reacts upon society, encouraging all to work for the future wellbeing of humanity rather than for immediate gain.”

Alan Watson Featherstone is a Scottish ecologist, natural history photographer, inspirational speaker and the founder of the conservation charity Trees for Life.

The neem tree

My favourite tree is neem (Azadirachta indica) locally referred to in Kiswahili as Mwarobaini. This is not a native tree but is widely available across my country, Tanzania, due to its adaptable characteristics and value among our communities. This tree does not shed its leaves in the driest months of the year as other tree species do, so it is a very good source of shade in the sunny months. It is also extremely adaptable to poor soils and requires minimal conditions to grow. It’s a good source of poles and is also a medicinal tree that my parents introduced to me and up to now I use it at least once every month.

A short story about this tree is that, when I was growing up in the rural agropastoral settings of northern Tanzania, where we had limited access to health facilities, my mother used prepare a steam therapy from neem leaves. She also made a concoction

every week from neem tree and other local medicinal herbs. This helped to keep us fit all year round. I grew up valuing this tree and my dad has planted several in our compound. If you see them, you will definitely recognise them by the chopped parts of its bark and branches.

In our Greening Mpimbwe Campaign, we plant every season and in the last wet season, we planted over 1000 neem trees. Right now, I have prepared two sections in my compound to plant at least 100 neem trees in the coming wet season, for medicinal use and shade.

Emmanuel Stephens Lekundayo is the Project Coordinator, Landscape Mentors Organisation (LCMO), Tanzania.

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven. And learn tranquillity.”

ITF founder and visionary tree planter, Richard St. Barbe Baker