MANAUS, BRAZIL - Residents of the Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS) Puranga Conquista, located on the Rio Negro near Manaus, are reforesting an area where a farm once operated. They were trained through a project to create nurseries and introduce native, fruit-bearing and timber seedlings in an organized way throughout the area.

Seedlings of several species chosen by the residents themselves are being introduced. In addition to reforesting the area, community members expect to generate short-, medium- and long-term income through the legal harvesting of timber and fruit.

As part of the project, nursery worker Jovenilson Corrêa searches the forest for seeds from different parent trees to help restore and strengthen the degraded area. He spoke about the field work.

“It is an organized planting system, carried out in a coordinated way so that we can achieve greater productivity. We, the residents of the area, used to plant, but not in an organized way. We planted in different ways, and productivity was very low,” said the nursery worker.

“With the new method introduced by the project, productivity is higher, management of the area is better and much easier. It is a method that does not harm the environment as much as the traditional planting methods we used before,” Corrêa explained.

Cíntia Valentim is also a nursery worker at the RDS Puranga Conquista. She highlighted the importance of the work in the region where she lives.

“An ecological restoration project in our community is very important. They arrived and through them we learned much more about this restoration work that we need to carry out in our areas. It has also brought an impact in generating income for local residents,” Valentim said.

Forestry engineer Ananda Matos spoke about the concept behind the project now being implemented.

“When you look at this vegetation, you can see that it has become impoverished. The idea of the project is to bring diversity back to the region, restore the area and make it as diverse as possible so that we can achieve both productive and ecological restoration,” she said.

Amazon Agency