Happy Earth Day!
Though we feel every day is Earth Day, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support, tell you what we have achieved over the last year and announce our plans for the future.
Of course, the last 12 months have been like no other and brought incredible challenges for everyone. But despite the pandemic, our plantations went ahead in Romania in Spring and Autumn 2020 – and we planted a massive 25,000 trees, bringing the total planted so far to 40,000. This is a huge achievement and all thanks to our incredible team on the ground, partners Carpathia and your support! And now we are preparing for our spring plantation 2021.
In April last year, we also helped the most vulnerable in Nucsoara village next to our plantations, providing food boxes for 51 elders at the height of the covid crisis. We also held our first Music for Earth fundraiser in May featuring ambassador musicians and DJs from around the world who played for the forests and helped us to raise the money for the elders – we are planning another event at the end of our Spring campaign.
The site in Devon ready for transformation
While circumstances have been difficult, we have been working hard to grow Forests Without Frontiers – and we are so excited to announce our first partnership project in the UK in Devon. Farm Under the Radar will be creating a haven for wildlife through tree-planting and regeneration of degraded land, and we aim to plant 5,000 trees with them this Spring (all with no pesticides or plastic).
And in other incredible news, we are delighted to announce a partnership with South Pole, a global climate solutions provider and project developer, who aims to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon and prosperous planet. We are the first partners in their innovative Grow Europe & Global programme, which connects organisations and businesses with local experts carrying out natural and holistic landscape restoration. They will also be supporting our arts and community projects. Read more about it here.
Our essential work in Romania will continue to grow in 2021 helping reverse deforestation, protect old growth forests and support biodiversity and traditional ways of life. Planting trees restores whole ecosystems and allows wildlife to flourish. We only use native species, employ local teams and use traditional methods. The forests are home to Europe’s most important populations of brown bear, lynx and wolves – and we’re very excited that bison have been recently reintroduced into the area we work in too. All our plantations will become home to these bison one day. How cool!
Some of the bison being reintroduced to the Fagaras Mountains
Working with local communities continues to be top of our priorities and this year we have plans to return to the Fagaras mountains to record Silvia Dan, a singer in her 70s and also one of the elders who received our food boxes, for an album to help preserve the work of traditional musicians, keeping the arts central to our work. It’s how Forests Without Frontiers started – with founder Nicoleta Carpineanu recording elders for her debut album BE ONE and is so important for posterity.
So on this Earth Day we’d like to celebrate everything we’ve achieved together with your help – and to move forward into 2021 with excitement and joy at how powerful we can be when we join forces.
A big shout out to our major supporters, including Locate Productions and Passion Pictures who are working to make their industries more environmentally-friendly and carbon neutral.
It’s something we all urgently need to be thinking about – whether individuals or businesses – there is no time to waste as we work to help regenerate our planet. There are so many creative ways to work with us to reduce your carbon footprint, work towards becoming carbon positive and help protect and restore forests and their incredible biodiversity for future generations. Do get in touch with us to discuss ideas; from restaurants donating a percentage from their bills to touring artists and festivals planting trees for every ticket sold, there are countless ways to help. We can all work together to help restore our Earth in fun and rewarding ways.
On this Earth Day we encourage you to join us on this mission of planting trees for future generations, helping us bring nature back to life and people back to nature. We leave you with this beautiful quote that we love:
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness”
Thank you for all your support so far
With love, the Forests Without Frontiers Team