Julia Silveira

The month of August 2017 brings a landmark for the BJF: we are on the way to materialize the first two nurseries of indigenous trees for the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor. Along with our technical reforestation partners Bioflora & LERF, we have carried out field visits to Caseara (Tocantins) and Santana do Araguaia (Pará) in order to budget and design these nurseries in close partnership and full support with the landowners.

The areas to construct the nurseries have been identified in Santa Juliana and Santa Fé farms. The start to build a network of seed and seedlings providers in the region has begun! The goal is to enable a forest restoration network by involving local communities. The final budget and planning will be ready by November 2017.

We are proud to share with you that we have been invited by Conservation International (CI) to be among the first 20 environmental NGOs in Brazil to form the Alliance for Restoration in Amazon. This new and prestigious multi-stakeholder network aims to catalyze and strengthen all forest restoration initiatives in the Brazilian Amazon. Our key developments for realizing the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor will be amplified on an international scale through our fellow members of the Alliance.

Last week, we had the pleasure of sharing our ambitious project with The Multinationals, a group of entrepreneurs and managers in the food and agro industry, initiated by our Ambassador Kees Rijnhout. A live-video-update of BJF’s field-results in Brazil was given by Ivan Nisida. The  energetic group shared their knowledge ánd interest to start supporting our work.

In May, a reporter/photographer working for a renowned magazine traveled to the Araguaia Corridor region in Brazil to prepare an article on the dream mission of the BJF. During an intense three weeks, the rich biodiversity of the Cerrado and Amazon were photographed and the landowners in our pilot project were interviewed. We will keep you updated on the results!

Last April, the Rotary Club Amstelveen organized a dynamic fundraising event: the Rotary Beach Volleyball Tournament! Twelve teams, one of which was a BJF Team, faced each other to share nice moments and raise funds for our cause. The final result: € 8.000 in donations for the BJF! Thank you so much Rotary Amstelveen!

Eric Schoorl is a dedicated member of the BJF-Team in Holland. Eric holds extensive professional experiences as a physical geographer and environmentalist. He is also an avid nature-lover and birdwatcher. Nowadays he uses his enthusiasm to manage TheLast600 campaign and carries out many other daily tasks to keep the BJF running. Thank you Eric

The Tiezzi family own two cattle farms along the Araguaia river in Tocantins state. They are truly setting the example for all other landowners in the Corridor Zone. They have embraced the idea of starting to reforest key areas of their two farms and join the Araguaia Corridor initiative. As ‘transition farmers’, they are also transforming their cattle farms into an ecologically friendly operation, while aiming to increase its productivity.

After one year of valuable experiences, the first phase of the BJF Pilot Project has now been completed! We have partnered with six landowners, mapped their properties totalling 6,000 hectares and determined the key areas to be reforested (as per the Brazilian environmental law). Also, the selection of native trees required for the reforestation phase for each property has now been concluded!

Phase 2 is about to begin: the planning of the forest restoration itself, in close cooperation with our technical partners, LERF and Bioflora. Hereafter, we will start with planting the seedlings of native trees in order to bring new healthy forests back into existence.