Our reforestation work is in full swing at Bilsa. By sometime early next year we hope to have reforested 125 additional hectares with fine hardwoods, including the various Mahogany species. The traditional Mahogany plants are looking good in the nursery. Many are between 50-60 cm tall, approaching the 70 cm size when we will begin outplanting this species. Thousands of Royal Mahogany trees will be planted out this month and next, as will the collection of Rio Palenque Mahogany that we have. The Manabi Manogany will be planted in the next several months as well.

Sincerely,
Michael McColm
Cofounder, Jatun Sacha Foundation

I was out in Bilsa for about 30 days during during July and into August. We had a very productive month. We are gearing up for the reforestation work for a designated 125 hectare area. With volunteers we reforested a total of 3 hectares or 7.5 hectares in a degraded pasture area. We are storing right now the 12,000 Mahogany plants we germinated last year in our nursery and have successfully germinated about 1000 examples of the highly endangered Rio Palenque Mahogany in our Western Forests Plant Conservation Center. This is certainly the largest collection of this species ever assembled in one place. The outplanting of these two Mahogany species will begin with the new rainy season in January. We have already begun the out planting of the Royal Mahogany and the Manabi Mahogany species which were prepared in our nursery beds during the last several months.

On a social note, we have reached an agreement with one of the local communities to construct an eco-tourism lodge and to begin taking the Natural History groups to these destinations. The walk to Dogola for example, is down the river canyon that contains the headwaters of the Dogola river. The walk is quite spectacular, with beautiful pools of crystal clear water, and forested, steep, rock canyons rising steeply on both sides of the river. At the bottom, the canyons rise up about 1200-1500 feet above the river.

Sincerely,
Michael McColm
Cofounder, Jatun Sacha Foundation

I was out at Bilsa for two weeks during the end of February and the beginning of March. Things are going quite well. The work that your group is paying for is going quite well. We have already bagged up about 10,000 of the 20,000 Mahogany Trees, which we had asked for economic help. We plan to finishing bagging the remaining 20,000 trees between now and the end of April. We will then plant these trees out beginning in January of 2001 or when they reach about 2 feet tall. We have an additional 150,000 trees to outplant this year. Could you discuss with your group the possibility of making this a funding priority for your group for this year. We can do some of this work with volunteers, but need to get local staff to help with the outplanting.

I will take some photos on the next trip out there to send you.

Sincerely,
Michael McColm
Cofounder, Jatun Sacha Foundation

We are planning a massive reforestation effort in Bilsa during this coming year. In November we constructed 80 nursery beds, each about 8 meters long and have germinated 150,000 seeds for a number of native hardwoods to the forest, including Mahogany and three Mahogany like trees all of which are in danger of extinction in Ecuador. These Manogany species will receive priority treatment in this reforestation work. We would like to request that the funding your group has raised be used to pay for part of our effort in planting these trees this year. Your funds would pay for three nursery workers for full time reforestation work for one year at Bilsa.

The four Mahogany species include the traditional Mahogany which is nearly extinct in Ecuador. We would like to have about 10,000 healthy trees growing so that later in 30 or 40 years we can have a minimal harvest of 50 trees each year to sell to maintain the reserve projects and programs. We have obtained 24,000 seeds and at least 20,000 have germinated at this point.

The Rio Palenque Mahogany is a tree in the Lauraceae family related to the avocado. Caloway Dodson published an article in the mid 1980s arguing that he had the last 12 examples of this species in the world. We have found the species to be growing in one small area of Bilsa and on two nearby farms. We have obtained 3000 seeds to this point.

Tangare-Royal Mahogany is also nearly extinct on the coast and the timber companies no longer cut it. We have been able to obtain 16,000 seeds for this year, but only from three sources which indicates its threatened status.

Manabi-Mahogany is another Mahogany like tree, that seems to grow well in reforestation projects. We do not know the status of this tree in the wild.

We have designated a 175 hectare area where these trees will be planted out during the next two years.

The Tangare or Royal Mahogany is ready to be planted and we will begin this work in February. These trees will be planted out in enrichment lines in degraded secondary forest areas.

We would like to place the majority of the traditional Mahogany in nursery bags for a year to allow these plants to obtain about half a meter in height before planting out in January of 2001 at the outset of next years wet season. After outplanting the Tangare we will begin with the outplanting of the Rio Palenque and the Manabi Mahogany in enrichment line plantings.

The project fits into the overall reforestation plan for Bilsa which includes 600 hectares of degraded areas. The future of the project will include maintenance cleanings of lines and the management of natural regeneration of other fine hardwood species in these same blocks.

Sincerely,
Michael McColm
Cofounder, Jatun Sacha Foundation