It’s been 1.5 years since our last update!
Here’s what’s happened, in a nutshell:
- We’re working in 7 districts of Maharashtra now: Pune, Ahmednagar, Solapur, Beed, Gadchiroli, Gondia and Raigad
- Our numbers so far are ~650 acres of afforestation and reforestation; ~3000 acres of vulnerable forests under protection; over 17,000 days of rural employment generated
- We have a team of nearly 50 F4Fers now!
In addition to our forest protection and restoration work, we have 4 other areas where we’ve been focusing:
(1) Remote monitoring of new and existing forests through satellite and drone data. This has been fun. We’ve had a good amount of success in modifying the open source DeepForest algorithm to count trees and measure their height and girth. The tech part is essential to the payments for ecosystem services model, since we can use this to make results-based payments. Here’s a picture:
(2) We’ve established two sapling nurseries and are in the process of establishing one biodiversity park. The park, with over 350 varieties of trees, shrubs, flowering plants, creepers, veils and grasses showcases the rich botanical heritage of Maharashtra and helps serve a seed bank for us and the communities.
(3) We’re collaborated with the Integrated Tribal Development Project Offices to launch a mobile science laboratory in the forests of Gadchiroli. Along with the prescribed science curriculum, the children are also taught about the importance and the economic and ecological value of the forests, climate-change and its devastating impact and astronomy. Here’s a video on the MSL work.
(4) And finally, this is the closest thing to our hearts! We’re supporting the forest department in Gadchiroli on their elephant response. The elephants have been somewhat dangerous and rather destructive and we are now putting together a comprehensive plan to prevent some of this in the coming months. Here’s some beautiful pictures of them hanging out in the forest:
We’re partnering with several non-profits and other organizations on our projects. Our two most recent partnerships are:
- With the amazing team at AgroRangers to implement a 150 acre Agroforestry model in Pune district in FY 23-24
- With the incredibly knowledgeable teams at SAGE foundation and The Grasslands Trust on our elephant projects work
The biggest challenges we’ve faced in the last year are:
- Setting in place systems to manage a larger operations team
- Convincing our communities to plant more “biodiversely” on their agricultural lands
- Convincing our communities to prevent anthropogenic forest fires
- Figuring out ways of reducing our own negative environmental impacts - like finding alternatives to black plastic sapling bags or reducing our own fossil fuel usage as we travel to meet different communities
However, in spite of the challenges and the long, long way we still have to go, we’re tremendously grateful to be able to get to do the work we love to do everyday 