Meet the Millennium Forest: A unique tropical island reforestation project

UngulateNerd92

UngulateNerd92

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  • A two-decade reforestation project on the tropical island of St. Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean has not only restored trees found nowhere else in the world, but has also involved nearly every member of the island community in the effort.
  • The Millennium Forest, as it’s called, has struggled with invasive species and irregular funding, but has still managed to thrive, adding new plant species — several of them threatened and two thought to have gone extinct. The growing forest is attracting animal species to its habitat, including St. Helena’s only endemic bird.
  • Ocean islands pose special challenges for forest restoration, since many plant species evolved in isolation on remote islands, and saw drastic population crashes to the point of extinction, or near-extinction, when people and invasive species arrived.
  • As a result, island reforestations typically can’t match original forest composition, but must mix both native and non-native species. The Millennium Forest project has now become a legacy that the current generation is handing down to upcoming ones, according to project founder Rebecca Cairns-Wicks.
Birds were probably the first colonizers to arrive. Some likely carried seeds, perhaps stuck to their feathers. Most of those seeds didn’t survive. Some did. Insects followed. And for 14 million years or so, the tiny island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, located midway between Africa and South America, was left to the whims of nature. Hundreds of species evolved here, suited solely to the little island’s surprising number of habitats.

https://news-mongabay-com.cdn.amppr...ue-tropical-island-reforestation-project/amp/
 
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