Contributed funds will be used to grow and plant trees used for the Uilenkraal Restoration Project.
Donate via this page: https://greenpop.org/donate/
For a site map of the project, please see: Uilenkraal Project.
The Greenpop Foundation is an environmental NPO focused on “sustainable urban greening and forest restoration projects, spreading environmental awareness, and activating people to become environmental stewards across Sub-Saharan Africa”. Each of their projects falls into one or more of the following categories: forest restoration, urban greening, food gardening and environmental awareness. Greenpop partners with and contributes to many local environmental and social initiatives, as well as aims to create a space to learn and share skills necessary to combat issues which affect our planet as a whole.
The Uilenkraal Forest Restoration Project (Forests for Life) is one of several forest restoration projects Greenpop runs throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and is centred around reforesting Africa’s southernmost forest. This project focuses on restoring the indigenous relic forest (some trees are over 1000 years old!) by removing invasive alien vegetation and reforesting degraded areas with indigenous trees from the project’s indigenous tree nursery. The four current sites on which this project runs are Platbos Reserve, Bodhi Khaya, Blomerus and Kleinbos.
Platbos has been severely degraded and overrun with invasive alien vegetation, which is being painstakingly removed and replaced with trees indigenous to the area, and had been severely harvested for fuel and marketable wood. The restoration of Platbos through this collaboration has resulted in over 145,000 trees being planted.
Bodhi Khaya links the Platbos Reserve to the Grootbos Reserve, another ‘old growth’ forest stand in the Uilenkraal Valley. This project site not only works towards ecorestoration and carbon sequestration but also works towards alien clearing, water conservation, organic permaculture, education and socio-economic upliftment programmes (to mention a few).
Blomerus is a property situated between Platbos Forest Reserve and Bodhi Khaya Nature Retreat. This property has patches of indigenous forests and fallow agricultural land in need of restoration. The work conducted on this property will complement the ongoing restoration work within the Uilenkraal valley, through active indigenous tree planting and the completion and maintenance of a fire break which protects both Platbos and Blomerus.
Kleinbos is situated on the top section of Platbos, which has been able to extend the existing firebreak onto Kleinbos, delineating the line between fire-prone fynbos habitats in the top section of the property, and the forest at the bottom section. This firebreak stretches across three properties partnering with Greenpop to conduct restoration-related work and will allow the extension of Platbos forest to its historic extent, considering the changes within the burning and non-burning communities within this area.