Brazil Begins Effort to Plant 73 Million Trees in the Amazon

The experiment in reforestation involves spreading native seeds instead of planting saplings

 Aerial view of the Amazon Rainforest near Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. ( Neil Palmer (CIAT)) 

By Jason Daley

smithsonian.com  

Assuming everything goes to plan, over the next six years, the Amazon rainforest will get 73 million new trees. The mass planting is part of a project sponsored by Conservation International, the Brazilian Ministry of Environment, and a number of other NGOs and corporations. As John Converse Townsend at Fast Company reports, it is the largest tropical reforestation effort ever attempted.

According to a press release from Conservation International, the effort will span deforested pasture lands over a 74,000-acre region spanning several Brazilian states—with the greatest focus in Southern Amazonas, Rondônia, Acre, Pará and the Xingu watershed. The purpose of the project is, in part, to revive the 20 percent of the Amazon that has been lost to deforestation due to agriculture and pasturing during the last 40 years. But the effort is also geared toward learning how to restore tropical forests…