“Save Baobabs” aims to support the preservation and reforestation of Kirindy Mitea tropical dry forest, the largest baobab forest in the world, located nearby Belo-Sur-Mer village, on the south west coast of Madagasikara. Our goal is to find sponsors for 100.000 baobabs by end of December 2020. This will allow us to bring an inclusive and sustainable solution based on 3 essential actions : PLANTING + TEACHING + EMPOWERING.
What do we PLANT ? We have built 3 nurseries that are producing thousands of healthy seedlings we need to regenerate the forest. We have started with 12 endemic & local species, among which is our mascot, the famous Adansonia Grandidieri. After 8 months of seedling, during which we have carefully selected the reforestation sites with the local forest authorities, the seedlings are ready to be planted in the forest.
What do we TEACH ? We are raising awareness of local communities about forest preservation. We are also implementing Eco Classes in public primary school to teach children ways to improve their own lives by protecting forest and sustainably profiting from it.
Who do we EMPOWER ? We are getting remote rural communities out of extreme poverty by providing alternative income to slash-and-burn agriculture. Green-jobs tend to give more value to the forest through the transformation of non-timber forest products such as baobab-fruit-powder.
Simply because baobabs reach adulthood within 3 years.
They would be around 1,5m and 2m tall, which is enough to survive by their own.
Indeed, within our program, we follow up the young baobabs until adulthood. This is critical to ensure a high rate of survival and thus, the success of the program.
At this point, we have found godparents to more than 5.000 baby baobab trees !!! This has enabled us to create 3 nurseries within 3 remote villages surrounding the Kirindy Mitea Forest. Those are giving birth to more than 8.000 baby trees, happily growing with our 5.000 baobabs.
Due to covid-19 crisis, we had encountered challenges. Those have led to the loss of thousands of baby trees that needed to be repotted, out of the “useful trees”-group. As a bad luck, at the same time the leader of the field team had fallen ill. However, he is now healthy and most of the trees have survived. This covid-19 crisis has enhanced the importance of our actions, in those remote places.
Dry Forest therefore, still has to find a large number of godparents to support its actions on the field. Our young seedlings will be planted between end of December and January 2021, at the start of the rainy season, because planting in a dry forest means respecting a strict schedule.
It’s very easy, you only have to fill out the form on the Join the Mission page in order to send us:
- your first and last name,
- your e-mail address,
- your country and city of residence,
- the number of baobabs you wish to sponsor OR to offer (birthday, birth, Christmas, etc.).
We will then send you by e-mail an invoice with your ID number. This invoice is either to be paid to:
- the Teratany partner-association based in France,
- or straight to Dry Forest Madagasikara with “YesTransfer” application directly to the Mobile-banking account of our Country Coordinator.
You can choose the above options according to your country of residence and according to your convenience.
In recognition of your contribution, you will receive an original baobab-certificate, to be printed and framed or just proudly shared on your social medias! The certificate mentions your name and the number of baobabs you are sponsoring (an final invoice could be added if requested).
Sponsorship of a baby-baobab during its first three years is equivalent to 5 euros or 6 dollars (in Madagasikara, the sponsorship amount is fixed at 10.000 ariary). This price was set after 4 years of experimental field test. The pre-project test of 2019 was successful with 2.000 healthy baobabs planted. Since then, we have launched the full program as explained in the part “What is the purpose of the program ?”.
We have set up and we manage 3 nurseries, which are located in remote villages (Marofihitra, Ambararata and Belo-Sur-Mer) to be as close as possible to the Kirindy Mitea forest, as you could see on Google Map. So far, the program has created 3 direct sustainable jobs and 240 indirect jobs. Knowing that each family is averagely composed of 6 persons, we estimate a positive economic impact on about 1.400 persons thanks to all the sponsors (godfathers & godmothers) ! If we reached 100.000 sponsored baobabs, we could contribute to preserve the largest baobab forest of the world from disappearing by 2025.
Dry Forest counts more than 5.000 sponsored baobabs.
The main sponsors among organisations are:
- the French company Strong Ninja: 2,000 baobabs;
- the Telma Foundation: 2,000 baobabs;
- the hotel-restaurant Sakamanga: 200 baobabs;
- Malagasy company FuturMap: 145 baobabs
In addition, a lot of our godparents are citizens from all horizons with an average of 10 sponsored baobabs.
We at Dry Forest believe in the old african proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. It perfectly makes sense and applies to regenerating the forest.
Dry Forest hopes to soon count you among its growing community of baobab-lovers and baobabs-defenders.