🌱 Vegetation Planting
Activities
Forest Regeneration and Cattle Ranching
Ranching and clearing have left pastures prone to drying. The program works with stockmen on regenerative grazing and reforestation, uses ForTerra results on carbon, biomass, and grazing management, and trials rapid tree establishment to recover grasslands, canopy, and biodiversity services tied to rain and storage.
Native Tree Reforestation Campaign
A long-horizon campaign targets 749,000+ native trees on degraded ancestral land—guided by Indigenous ecological knowledge, aimed at biodiversity, food sovereignty, and climate resilience. Delivery includes nurseries, a core field team, ecological assessment, and harvest rules aligned with forest health.
Landscape Planning and Pattern Language
During onboarding, participants used cadastral sheets and community-scale maps of forest, slope, erosion risk, and connectivity to relate regeneration choices to parcel-scale management. Joint planning flagged priority zones—unstable slopes, riparian corridors, connectivity gaps—and paired them with a pattern vocabulary: swales and vetiver for erosion, agroforestry on degraded pasture, buffers near intakes. The aim was landscape literacy: seeing each plot as part of a larger system and preparing evidence for later DAO proposals.
Mangrove Conservation and Spatial Planning
SPaCES (Spatial Planning for Conservation, Sustainable Economic Development and Society) supplies mapping and planning support across Forever Sabah programmes. Current work maps mangrove extent, loss, threats, and restoration need toward protecting Sabah’s mangrove estate. The Lower Kinabatangan & Segama programme deepens co-governance—community protocols, Locally Managed Marine Areas, and Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas—in a large mangrove–estuary system. Livelihoods (e.g. solar cold storage for fishers, ecotourism) aim to reduce extraction pressure while communities steward the wetlands they rely on.
Riparian Watershed Recovery
Salmon offered a practical entry: a ready stakeholder base and steep declines—a pattern across Scotland, not only the Findhorn. The Riverwoods push on riparian woodland then connected salmon recovery to climate and woodland restoration for anglers, landowners, and conservation interests. Work extends beyond narrow riparian strips toward healthier, biodiverse catchment landscapes. Flood risk matters as much as cooler, cleaner water, so “climate-resilient rivers” sit alongside habitat goals. Carbon storage is pursued from eroding headwaters to salt marsh and seagrass in Findhorn Bay. Nature Recovery is watershed-wide: native species, invasive control, coastal carbon habitats. Fieldwork has included seedling and peat surveys, seagrass mapping, and new records of freshwater pearl mussels.
Regenerative Agriculture Program
The program works through technical schools, pairing demonstration sites, student training, and carbon finance for fences and water. Farms document ~0.5 inch annual soil gain and up to $110,000 first-year income. Trainings include homemade repellents from chile, onion, and garlic so practices stay affordable and ecological. Soil-centered climate work ties to ~150% emissions offset via food—buying time, as Muñoz notes, for better batteries and other hard tech.
Deshkan Ziibi Conservation Impact Bond
The Deshkan Ziibi Conservation Impact Bond (DZCIB) links investor repayment to five holistic outcome streams—habitat, knowledge/circling, economy, relational connection, and ecocentric wellbeing—rather than treating ecology as the only ledger. Partners launched design work in 2019 in ethical space hosted by Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. The five-year pilot began March 2020, spanning 60 ha in the zone, to accelerate healthy landscapes, nature-based solutions, reconciliation, and human–nature relationship. - Capital: CAD $130,000 from VERGE Capital (Pillar Non-profit Network), structured as a repayable prototype via the VERGE Breakthrough Fund (5% interest, three-year term). - Habitat delivery: Indigenous TEK and Western science together; 53 projects with nine partners (First Nations, trusts, municipalities, ALUS, etc.), typically with 1:1 in-kind match. - Outcome payers: Third-party evaluation gates repayment. Payers include 3M Canada, multi-year public anchor funding, and Pollinator Partnership—grants legally conditioned on outcomes. - Leadership: Carolinian Canada, VERGE, Thames Talbot Land Trust, Deshkan Ziibiing, Ivey Business School—explicitly Two-Eyed Seeing in design and review. Five pillars (each with a pay-for-success benchmark): habitat gains; people learning on the land; intercultural economic opportunity; nature connectedness; ecocentric sightings—broadening “success” beyond hectares. Through July 2021, the pilot reported 69 ha improved, 39,000+ native plants, and ~450 people in land-based learning—spanning volunteer planting (e.g. Briscoe Woods), invasive control and corporate seed collection (Hawk Cliff), bilingual trail and language work (Anishinaabensag Miikaanens), and multi-site work with conservation authorities and First Nations. As Robin Wall Kimmerer notes in the report, restoring land without restoring relationship is empty; relationship is what endures.
Healthy Landscape Strategy
Carolinian Canada's Healthy Landscape Strategy aims to grow Canada's Biggest Wildlife Garden connecting Toronto to Windsor with healthy habitat. The strategy is informed by ecologist Doug Tallamy's research demonstrating the ways in which native plants support greater insect populations, biodiversity, and landscape health than non-native plants. The Healthy Landscape Strategy includes four key activities, linking restoration and conservation priorities based on the latest local and global science: 1. Save local nature: Increase commitment to saving habitat with long-term agreements. 2. Steward healthy landscapes: Use best ecosystem practices to increase habitat quality. 3. Seed, grow, create, or restore high-quality habitat: Use native plants sourced locally, ecologically, and ethically to increase habitat quantity and connections. 4. Lead healthy resilient communities: Connect communities to nature through strong equitable collaboration, positive engagement, First Nations leadership, and an ethical, local native plant industry. Support a climate-smart, green economy for thriving local communities through cross-sector collaboration. Native plants hold cultural and relational significance to many Indigenous peoples who view native plants as relatives and friends, not commodities. As the demand for native plants increases, part of Carolinian Canada's strategy is to ensure an ethical seed strategy for native plants within the region.
Ecological Restoration of Valle de Zaquencipá
The land at Bosque Fractal is part of a critical watershed feeding Bogotá and surrounding areas, and includes degraded zones requiring urgent care. Over the last few years, the team has planted thousands of native trees, regenerated damaged soils, and begun monitoring water flow and soil health. With initial funding, Bosque Fractal will expand several high-priority projects, including: Oak Forest Restoration: Reviving native oak forests, which are crucial for water retention and biodiversity. The oak forests surrounding the valley are themselves ancient elders, teaching how to heal and regenerate both land and spirit. Pollinator Hotel: Supporting bees and other pollinators as keystone species for ecosystem health. Rainwater Purification Plant: Supplying clean water to the community while demonstrating regenerative water management practices. Regenerative Tourism: Creating sustainable tourism experiences rooted in cultural education and ecological stewardship. Bioregional Zone and Guest House: Serving as a living showcase for bioregional practices and a space for international learning exchanges, including building a guest house for workshops and cross-bioregional collaboration. The restoration work recognizes that this ecosystem, though occupying just 1.7% of Colombia's páramos, provides 85% of the country's drinking water, making its restoration critical not just locally but nationally.
River Ericht Catchment Restoration
The Ericht is among Europe’s most important Atlantic salmon spawning systems. Restoration finance nationally falls short of need; new policy instruments are appearing, and this project is testing how to operate in that shifting policy and funding terrain. Work includes woodland and peatland restoration, with salmon survival as the narrative anchor: as one participant put it, many doubt salmon can persist—“but we’re going to do our best to see what we can do.” Habitat repair is treated as the decisive lever for keeping salmon in these rivers.
Reforesting Edible Forests
A regenerative food forest project that increases biodiversity while providing economic benefits to 47 communities. The project supports communities while restoring forest ecosystems, creating productive landscapes that integrate food security with ecological restoration.
Natural Ecosystems Restoration
Restoration focuses on natural areas and how they connect to working farmland. On priority sites such as La Muela, partners work to recover vegetation, soils, and water retention. On farms, agreements identify where to restore natural zones alongside production, with measures to hold water and soil and to build biodiversity. Corridor initiatives extend habitat connectivity so natural patches and productive land form a coherent mosaic.
Landscape-Scale Restoration Projects
The Alliance has adopted 11 community-focused projects that cover more than 15% of Scotland's rainforest zone, with more coming soon. These projects include Beò Airceig (an ambitious 30,000-ha collaboration between the community and landowners in the glens surrounding Loch Arkaig), Appin Rainforest Regeneration (created by the local community development trust to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits), and Loch Lomond Rainforest Project(aiming to deliver both habitat restoration and an education programme for locals and visitors). The projects are helping to tackle some of the big issues, such as deer management, invasive non-native species, job creation and even cultural regeneration through folk festivals!
Participatory Forest Restoration
Acción Serrana has developed a sophisticated restoration infrastructure which includes maintenance of protective fencing, seed collection, nursery construction and operation, seedling germination and transplantation, and strategic underplanting during the rainy season. They run more than 26 nurseries producing Polylepis trees across 12 operational areas, creating a supply chain for high-altitude reforestation. The work spans over 70 consecutive campaigns, resulting in more than 876,000 native trees planted across more than 290 hectares of degraded mountain landscapes. Each restoration campaign involves an extensive collaboration network: over 25 organizations including NGOs, government institutes, and businesses working together. The campaigns employ 65 permanent staff and mobilize more than 1,300 annual volunteers.