The Rufford Small Grants forums are now open. Membership is currently limited to grant recipients, but everyone else is welcome to follow the discussion
Present day Mountain forests of Central Argentina represent less than 5 % of their previous extension and in some areas more than 90% of their biomass is composed of exotic invasive species. This has had drastic consequences in our water resources, wildlife, carbon storage and other ecological services. In 1997 I started a restoration project in the extremely degraded high Mountains of central Argentina with friends, volunteers, lots of enthusiasm, almost no experience and very little funding - until my first RSG. After the first 2 RSGs and some local funding, we now have a nice 40 hectare valley and 5 smaller areas to show as examples of what can be done in land and forest restoration (see detail in photo).
This done, we need to foster public ecological understanding and convince politicians to massively invest economic resources in the restoration of our native forests and soils. Thus with my Booster RSG I now propose to foster public ecological understanding through conferences and educational material, organizing a forest workshop with scientists, public and government participation and organizing restoration ecology courses. We also aim to conduct two applied researches with the help of local students and promote volunteer participation in forest restoration, which are ways of getting more people involved in nature conservation. And of course, we need to keep maintaining or first restoration areas (fixing fences and continue to plant vegetation in still active erosion gullies) and trying to find mechanisms to maintain these areas in the longer run.
