Earth Sangha Inc

Programs: Dc-area wild plant nursery:propagation from the wild of about 320 plant species native to the greater washington, dc, region for use in local ecological restoration projects. All stock is local ecotype (propagated directly from local wild native-plant populations). Our plants are used in our own projects and in those of other nonprofits, friends of groups, individual restorationists, and government agencies managing local parkland. During 2017, over 27,000 native trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants were distributed from the nursery to local forests, meadows, and maintained landscapes.

tropical agroforestry: tree bank hispaniola program - operation of two community tree nurseries and associated forest-conservation and tree-planting programs on the dominican side of a portion of the dominican republic haiti border, to slow deforestation and help small-holder farmers increase their incomes. During 2017, 54 farms participated. The nurseries produced about 15,000 orchard, timber, and local-ecotype native tree seedlings; 25 native species were represented, all of them probably in decline in the wild. Our forest credit program, in which our local independent partner organization extends low-cost credit to small-holder farmers in exchange for forest conservation easements, lent $22,789 to 35 farms, in exchange for easements over about 195 acres of forest. Our 44. 3-acre nature reserve, the regions only community-owned nature reserve, is protecting the headwaters of a village water supply. Our rising forests coffee program, which buys small-holder native-shade coffee, is protecting about 20 acres of forest; during 2017, rising forests continued to help local farmers recover from a devastating leaf-rust epidemic that killed virtually all of their coffee trees during 2014-15; about 7,000 rust-resistant coffee trees were planted under native forest canopy. Also during 2017, we expanded our rising forests cocoa project, by growing and distributing cocoa trees for planting under native canopy. About 5,000 cocoa trees were distributed in 2017. Our cocoa effort began in 2016. Since coffee and cocoa are high-value shade-tolerant crops, rising forests creates a powerful economic incentive to conserve forest. As part of our rising forests effort, we continue to restore additional patches of forest for underplanting with coffee and cocoa.

dc-area forest restoration outside stream buffers:on-going work at the 20-acre marie butler leven preserve in fairfax county, virginia. During 2017, about 378 people volunteered 967 hours of their time to help suppress invasive alien vegetation in the parks 17-acre forest, and to restore native vegetation. We suppressed a wide range of invasives, including trees, shrubs, vines, and herbaceous species. Control efforts extended throughout most of the park but are far from complete. We also put in about 2,000 locally native plants, produced at our wild plant nursery. About 100 of these were shrubs and trees; the remainder were herbaceous species.