Forests & trees

March 23, 2009March 22, 2009

Aid Tree Aid

A BBC story alerted me yesterday to the existence of Tree Aid:

TREE AID was established as a charity in 1987 by a group of foresters in response to the famine in Africa, brought to public attention by Band Aid and Live Aid.

They wanted to provide a long term solution once the emergency relief efforts ended. They believed that trees could significantly reduce the vulnerability of communities in rural Africa’s drylands to drought and famine in the future.

Our current strategy expands on the original concept, focusing on forest management and income, food and medicines from trees.

I like their Cake Taste initiative, and their Tree of the Month feature. Seems very worthy. And it’s easy to donate online, should you feel so inclined.

March 23, 2009

Nibbles: Rice, Cattle and snails, Tropical forages, rattan

The politics of rice in Cambodia.
Who needs Moiled Cattle when you have snails. With video goodness.
Providing a baseline for future tropical forages collecting in Vietnam?
WWF plugs sustainable rattan in the Mekong.

March 19, 2009March 19, 2009

Nibbles: Community forestry, Fresh water, Salinity, Seed systems, Acacia, Iron, Cambodia

Community forestry not making enough money in Namibia. Yeah, but who is?
Southern African freshwater bodies in trouble. Gotta be some worried rice wild relatives out there.
Salinity increasing in Bangladesh. That can’t be good.
Let the people have seeds of local varieties!
Australian takes acacias to Niger, coals to Newcastle.
Breeding rice for tolerance to high Fe in West Africa.
“One of the most abundant sources of fish in Asia, the lake feeds a hungry nation.”

March 12, 2009March 12, 2009

Nibbles: Fruits, Natives, Economics, Artichoke, Gardens

Beautiful Images of Strange Fruits. Botanical not culinary, mostly
Hawaiians paid to plant natives.
Dismal science tells boffins which cattle breeds to save. Yeah, because we all so trust economists these days, right?
“Cynara 2009, the 7th International Symposium on Artichoke, Cardoon And Their Wild Relatives, will be held in Saint Pol de LÃ©on, Brittany, France, the ‘home town’ of the famous artichoke variety Camus de Bretagne.” Via.
Pinoy allotment manual.

March 4, 2009

Non-wood forest products digested but not fed

The new NWFP-Digest is out. At least if you get the alert from FAO by email. If you go to the “Current issue” page on the website you still get the last issue. It should change in the next few days. But why no RSS feed? I’m beginning to think it’s just me that thinks RSS feeds can significantly boost ease of use at no cost.