Summer 2006 Newsletter

The critical role women playin both community developmentand environmental conservationcould never be defined betterthan it is in Sanankoroba, Mali.They are demonstrating both thepower to absolutely degrade theenvironment AND the power toturn deserts into forests.

Women who are limited intheir ability to generate incomeand determined to feed their chil-dren are quickly depleting theremaining pockets of tree cover;the sale of wood and charcoalgives them food security. Anever-ending caravan of cars,pickup trucks, and buses carrythe wood into Bamako to feed thecity's need for fuel.

Local NGOs are workingfeverishly in rural villages toengage women in something,anything, that gives them analternative source of income: gar-dening, honey, shea butter, driedfruit - the list goes on.

The long list of objectives ofmy trip entailed finding ways forpoor women - living in what soon will be a desert - toincrease food production, conserve water, combatinsect infestations, improve soil quality, and keep wellsfrom drying up, all while generating income and pro-tecting what remains of the environment. It sounds

like an impossible task, but we have been there, donethat, and though we could never afford the t-shirt, wehave accumulated 30 years of knowledge, as well astraining materials, videos, and pictures, that show theway.

Page 1Johnny Ipil-Seed News Vol. XIV, No. 2

The quarterly newsletter of Trees for the FutureSummer 2006 Vol. XIV, No. 2

Report from Mali: Forest Gardens and Desert Apples

continued page 3

TREES’ Technician John Leary, while on a Farmer-to-Farmer assignment throughOIC Intern’l and USAID, receives a tour of this lush forest garden by the Dwalala

Women’s Group in Banamba, Mali, an extremely dry and degraded area.

Your program continues to grow in anumber of directions. Our headquarters,the Ruppe Center, has been bustlingwith activity.

TREES’ technicians and volun-teers have been working overtimetrying to balance local activitieswith the growing international pro-gram.

Visitors from Cameroon, Haiti,Ethiopia, Honduras, Senegal, andother countries have been knock-ing down the door trying to get treeplanting projects started in theirhomelands.

We have been doing our best tokeep up with the many festivals,tree planting days, and Earth andArbor Day activities while makingpresentations to local groups,churches, and schools.

The distance agroforestry trainingprogram is requiring constant attentionas our first graduates turn in final agro-forestry exams.

We are especially proud of the greatwork that Alan Wright and his students

at the Westtown School in WestChester, Pennsylvania, have done togrow and plant seedlings.

Our office also is busy addressingcommunities’ concerns about climatechange, hurricanes, deforestation, andfood security. What a great time to beinvolved in such a positive program!


Johnny Ipil-Seed News is aquarterly newsletter of TREESFOR THE FUTURE, Inc., anonprofit organization dedicatedto helping people of the world’spoorest communities to beginenvironmentally beneficial, self-help projects.

This newsletter is printed bywind energy on recycled paperwith soy-based ink and is sent toall supporting members toinform them of recent events,plans, financial matters and howtheir support is helping people.

BOARD OF DIRECTORSDr. John R. Moore, Dr. PeterFalk, Mr. Oscar Gruspe, Mr.

Dave Deppner, Mr. HankDearden, Mr. Bedru Sultan

Ms. Marilou Herman

FOUNDERSDave and Grace Deppner

STAFFJohn Leary, Intern’l ProgramsLoretta Collins, DevelopmentAdam Norikane, Central AmericaChris Wells, Advisor on Asia

Gabby Mondragon, N. PhilippinesCedric Encarnation, S. Philippines

Jorge Betancourt, HondurasGuillermo Valle, Honduras

Omar Ndao, SenegalJohn Coleman, Belize

Eugene Edwards, BelizeEben Mensah, Ghana

Anne Toomey, Volunteer

If you wish to receive thisnewsletter, or would like moreinformation, please contact:

TREES FOR THE FUTUREThe Loret Miller Ruppe

Center for Sustainable Development

9000 16th Street, P.O. Box 7027

Silver Spring, MD 20907

Toll Free: 1-800-643-0001Ph: 301-565-0630

Fax: [email protected]

WWW.PLANT-TREES.ORG

TREES’ volunteer, Sylvie Leary, poses with Johnny Appleseed (left) and Joe Howard,the county arborist (right), at the Arbor Day Celebration.

News from the Ruppe Center

TREES’ board member, Hank Dearden, plants hisfavorite sycamore seedling in Maryland.

On-site trainings: I visited 14different villages where Malianmen and women were garden-ing for subsistence and sale.During these visits I met withfarmers and gave immediaterecommendations based onideas and technology that haveproved successful in similar con-ditions. I helped to deliver seventechnical trainings directly to over200 people, most of whom werewomen. Most importantly, I spentcountless hours explaining everything Iknow about market gardens, natural insect reme-dies, and ways to conserve water to the techniciansof The Malian Association for EnvironmentalConservation (AMCFE). With the input of those

technicians and that of the par-ticipating women's groups, weultimately designed an agro-forestry intervention that willmake tremendous improve-

ment in the environ-ment ofS a n a n k o r o b a

while putting a lot more money in the women's pock-ets. The trip report and plenty of technical mumbojumbo can be found at plant-trees.org.

Desert Apples: From the first meeting with local tech-nicians, I was made aware of what a major problem thethe lack of high-quality tree seeds is for reforestationactivities. Technicians can only get seeds of eucalyptustrees, and eucalyptus is a terrible tree for people toplant in the sahel! To address this problem, I hadbrought a supply of seeds from TREES headquarters,and I had also asked our Senegal Field Rep, OmarNdao, to make the 3-day trip and bring us a few bagsof seed. Ultimately Trees for the Future distributedover 100,000 seeds consisting of orange root stock,

several fast-growing forestry species, a few thornytrees that are good in living fences, papayas,

henna, and desert apples. Desert apples you might ask?

Having worked in Senegal (Mali's

Page 3Johnny Ipil-Seed News Vol. XIV, No.2

Forest Gardens and Desert Apples

desert appleTop left: Mohamed Traore, a technician for

AMCFE, is coordinating the seed distributionand nursery trainings for TREES in Mali.

Here, Mohamed uses the agroforestry manualduring a training.

Bottom right: John visited charcoal produc-ers to discuss popular tree species, charcoalproduction techniques, and ways for produc-

ers to plant their own woodlots.Bottom left: The wood cut by women in ruralareas finds it way to the markets of Bamako.

from page 1


Forest Gardens and Desert Apples

neighbor to the west) for 5 years, I have long heard ofthe mysterious desert apple, but I had never actuallyseen one. Desert apple is the rough translation from theFrench name, Pomme du sahel, which is a type ofjujube fruit tree in the Ziziphus genus. There is a hardy,local variety, known in Bambara as tomono, which isthe size of small grape. The desert apple must be graft-ed onto the local variety, and once it takes, the tree willproduce fruit the size of a plum! It is crisp, delicious,tastes like an apple and is now giving farmers partic-ipating in our Mali and Senegal projects a sourceof cash income equivalent to $40 of fruit pertree! Combining these desert apples withhenna trees and pigeon peas, we were ableto help communities plant fast-growingtrees and bushes that produce marketableproducts and do not require much water atall.

Forest Gardens: Everywhere we go, com-munities can always benefit from morediversity, diversity, and diversity. This isexceptionally true in the African sahel.People are in need of diversifying both the

sources of food and income and the timing ofproduction; otherwise they only get one bigpay day per year when their one crop is har-vested. Mixing species also minimizes insectinfestations. Trees in crop fields and gardensminimize water and wind damage, and theystabilize temperatures and humidity.

Unfortunately, most gardens I visited inMali were absolutely treeless. The soils werebare and degraded, vegetables were exposedto scorching temperatures, and insect infesta-tions were ruining their eggplant, okra, andlettuce. Water was drying up as quickly as thebeds were watered, and women were stressedby the chance of losing their only crop.

BUT there were a couple exceptions, andit looked as though Grace Deppner herselfhad designed and planted them. Despite thearid climate and lack of water, women wereintegrating lettuce, henna, onions, papayas,mangos, and countless other bushes, trees,and vegetable crops in their forest gardens.With the expansion of forest gardens and the

larger production of specialty products like desertapples, we are helping women ensure their families’food security for decades to come.

This forest garden in Tafele, Sanankoroba, has a good mixture of vegetables and fruit trees.

Women in Sanankoroba identified henna and Acacia nilotica as twomultipurpose trees they wished to have in their garden’s windbreak.

These trees give them marketable products and medicine.


Grace Ghamogha Birnsai & THE WOMEN OF LUNSpring brought us a most welcome visitor, Grace

Birnsai, now studying at Grambling University. Shewill soon finish so she can return to her family inCameroon and get back to planting trees.

Grace first contacted us early in 1990. She was thenadministrative assistant to the director of Peace Corpsin Yaounde. She explained that women in NorthwestProvince had been part of a program to plant eucalyp-tus trees. They soondiscovered that thisproject, started tohelp women inrural communities,actually left themworse off.

We sent seeds oftrees that would befar more benefi-cial, along with aletter offeringsome technicaland planningideas. Soon we gota letter back. Theseeds had been plantedand there were many newquestions. Soon we were beginning regular correspon-dence, learning much more about the problems ofthose highlands, and starting to sense that this couldgrow into a very large project.

In January, 1991, while in Nigeria, I decided it wastime to meet Grace and offer some "hands-on" help. Igrabbed a short flight to Yaounde where I met Graceand her husband Chris Ghamogha, then sub-Ministerof Agriculture, and all their family.

The next day Grace, Chris and I piled into a car andheaded for her home town of Kumbo 450 km away inthe mountains. No air-conditioner and the road wassoon brick-red dust. By the time we reached the topand climbed out, we looked like three red clay statues.In the town of Jakiri, we saw what eucalyptus can do:

where once there was a large waterfall and lake withstreams where children swam, now there was a dust-bowl. Women stood by the roadside, each with two 5-gallon buckets, waiting for the water truck so theycould buy enough water to last them a few days.

The eucalyptus had been cut as poles. Each time one

was cut, two grew back. Their branches and roots keptextending onto other people's land where, farmersinsisted, fluid oozing from them poisoned the land.Nothing would grow. This belief was enforced just lastyear by Prof. Wangari Maathai who stated that "eveninsects won't live under these trees". (But as we soonfound, snakes, especially the dangerous Black Mamba,seem to love Eucalyptus trees. We looked at these trees

from a distance).But Leucaena and

other species didgrow well - alongwith coffee and allthe crops plantedbeneath them. Onepopular tree is"Pajum" (Pygeumafricanus). The barkhas real medicinalvalue for all sorts ofintestinal disordersand the symptoms ofmalaria. It became a

real income-generatorfor the women of this

project.The next day, we got permission of the Fon (chief or

traditional leader) to use land along the river forseedbeds so women wouldn't need to carry irrigationwater long distances. That afternoon, 73 familiesjoined together making seedbeds and planting almost aquarter-million tree seeds.

That's how the project continued to grow, withGrace's guidance and infectious spirit. Over the nextseveral years, the program she and Chris startedtook off in more than 300 villages and planted morethan 4.5 million trees in these uplands. She arrangeda meeting with all the science teachers from theProvince. This became a big part of the "Tree Pals"program the following year. Grace talked to our staff about what she and Chris had

begun with 73 women in her Lun Women's Group. Wealso talked about future plans, about when she returnsto Cameroon and teams up with Chris again so that,together, we can make even more of these uplandsgreen again.

Loretta, Dave, and Grace in front of the Ruppe Center

This story of a package ofseeds that I received fromTrees for the Future is stillgrowing!

Early in 2005 I contactedJohn Leary at TFTF andasked him for tree seeds forone of my projects inEastern Province, Zambia.With no hesitation, Ireceived a reply from John.The seeds were on their way,to be sent to an address I hadgiven him here in Zambia.Every time I would return toLusaka, the capital ofZambia, I would check tosee if the seeds had arrived."No, not yet", became thereply too many times. Iemailed John and beggedhim to send more. It wasobvious the seeds had gottenlost. No surprise here inZambia, my care packagesfrom Canada and Germanyhad succumbed to the samefate many times. He had noproblem with sending me more, but this time theywould go to my home address in Canada and be trans-ported in a back pack of a willing volunteer returningto Zambia. When they arrived I greeted that package asI would my chocolate goodies from Germany,hungrily. The brown envelope was battered andeven had a hole in it. Much to my relief as Ifought my way through the layers of plastic wrap,I saw the packs of seeds, Leucaena, Moringa andothers, unopened. Even a book about Leucaenawhich now has been read more times than a NewYork Times Best Seller.

Timing of the seeds arrival was perfect; just asthe first claps of thunder announced the start ofthe rainy season in this part of Southern Africa.The community was ready. The newly construct-ed tree nursery stood waiting besides the rehabil-itated village well; the rows of soil-filled polypots steamed in the afternoon heat after the first

rain in many months. Theplanting began with no cere-mony, just bent backs andtender loving care; the seedsquickly entered those pots.Felix, the committee chair-man, stood proudly, record-ing the planted seeds and thedifferent species in his newrecord book. Only timewould tell now. I moved onto other projects and returnedto Canada for the holidaysand would not return untilafter the rains had stopped.

For the community, lifewould be very busy duringthis time. After plantingcomes the continuous weed-ing of their maize and thenthe harvest. It also is a verylean time as far as food in thevillage; they would patientlyawait the green corn andpumpkin leaves. Everyday Ithought about those seeds,checking the mail and hop-ing for some word from the

village. The letter came finally and it contained nothing but

good news. The seeds had germinated, and were grow-ing quickly. The thorn fence was winning the battle


Garry Brooks and members of the Mumbi Reforestation Club

At Work in Zambia - Contribution by Garry Brooks

Garry was honored to be taken to this spot and havehis photo taken with Chief Sandwe the 9th. These twotrees, one with white bark the other with black bark,were planted over 150 years ago by the chiefs forefa-

thers and Dr. David Livingstone when he went throughthe valley. It was to symbolize the white and the black

man working together. Garry is working with ChiefSandwe and his people to find a way toward a 'sus-

tainable livelihood' for the people in the valley.

with the village goats who, as Felix described to melater, tried numerous times to breach the fence. Thecommunity had formed a club called MumbiReforestation Club and has twelve founding members.They wanted more seeds! “Bring us more seeds”appeared more than once in that fulfilling letter.

Time passed. I returned to Zambia and to the village

on the afternoon of March 10, 2006. And as I enteredthe village I saw rows of small enclosures containingtrees being protected from those pesky village goats. Itoured the village over the next few days and was intro-duced to every tree and its new owner. Widows, head-men, committee members, the community at large andeven the doubting Thomas's of the program proudly

showed off their trees. I measured some of theMoringa and Leucaena and many were overthirty two inches tall and all very healthy injust over three months. I am so proud of thiscommunity. They have now planted over 3000seeds that I was able to bring with me and Iwill return in the next weeks to see how thingsare growing and 'oh ya!' take them more seeds.

Editor’s Note: Garry Brooks is a former CanadianVCO Volunteer now working with the MumbiReforestation Group and several others in EasternProvince, Zambia. After many years of owning andoperating businesses in British Columbia, Garrychanged his direction in life to working to giverural communities a better life. See more atwww.africancommunityproject.com


At Work in Zambia

Update from the Philippines: Waiting for the Rain

The Mumbi Reforestation Club protects seedlings from goats

Through a grant byWorking Assets, an addi-tional 100,000 seedlingsof several species wereproduced this season.

In the picture on theright, Program leaderGabby Mondragon andcommunity leader DickCruzado with seedlingsof Acacia mangium -ready to plant.

Acacia mangium, alsoknown as black wattle, isan excellent tree for con-struction, boat building,and furniture and cabinetmaking.

We’ll have a completeupdate in the next issue.


TREES, Hurricanes, and Gas Prices

Editor’s Note - We see the global environmental,and economic, situation rapidly changing. The fol-lowing article is intended to bring you our viewsand experiences about how all this affects each ofus. Your comments will be appreciated.

June is here. Soon we'll see the warm days of sum-mer. That's the good news.

The bad news is that this year's hurricane season isalso about to start. Last year we used up the entireEnglish alphabet, and some of the Greek alphabet,finding names for all the major tropical storms thatcame on us. The number of category 4 and 5 stormshas doubled over the past 35 years. The average windspeed has increased by 50%.Thanks largely to our steadily increasing use of fos-

sil fuels, “carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in theatmosphere has steadily increased from 280 parts permillion (ppm) in preindustrial times to 381 ppmtoday” writes KarenMcKee of the USGeologic Survey. Globalclimate change continuesto raise the temperaturesof our oceans. That, inturn, brings even more,and stronger, storms in theyears ahead.

The trees that couldremove this carbon aredisappearing: the worldloses more than 100,000acres of forests every day.Instead of cleaning the air, smoke from forest fires inplaces such as Alaska and Indonesia pumps evenmore carbon into our atmosphere.

As we head for the beach, we shouldn't forget that2005 was the hottest year on record and that there'sreason to expect that record to be broken sometimesoon. Maybe in 2006. The average water temperaturebetween West Africa and the West Indies, an area werefer to as the hurricane factory, is one full degreewarmer than it was one year ago.Here at TREES, last August 29: the day Katrina met

New Orleans, was a major turning point. Our e-mailsand website have been twice as busy ever since. Most

people we have heard fromwere surprised that a stormcould virtually wipe out amajor American city soquickly. We should mention that in his book Bayou Farewell

(2003), former Peace Corps volunteer Mike Tidwellpoints out that it was much more than the storm. NewOrleans was not originally built below sea level.Instead, over more than two centuries, it has beensinking. Much of the reason is the levees which don'tlet silt accumulate. This, in turn, causes the city andnearby bayous to continue to sink.

Again, oil played a very important part. In order tocut the cost of nearby drilling, oil companies clearednearly 6,000 square miles of wetlands, trees, andgrasses which, if still there, would have mitigatedmuch of the surge of Katrina. The oil industry feels

no sense of responsibility,stating that "there was nolaw against it" at the timethey cleared the land.

Add to that the fact thatas the water rose in NewOrleans, gasoline pricesalso rose by $1.00 andmore. The price of gas hasnearly tripled since 2000.The average American isnow paying 60% more inenergy costs than at thebeginning of this century.

A recent issue of Time Magazine (April 3, 2006)pointed out that because global warming is increas-ing, the polar ice caps are melting much faster thanearlier predicted, already threatening polar bears andsmaller animals. Between now and 2050 we can loseas much as 25% of all species on Earth.

The point is being solidly driven home that ourdependence on fossil fuel, much of it imported, seri-ously affects our health, our national security, oureconomy and, quite possibly, our very ability to sur-vive on this planet. And, other than flashy advertis-ing on TV, it seems not very much is being doneabout it.

Slash and burning farming, shown here in Ghana, con-tributes 12% of the carbon entering the atmosphere.


The bright side of this is that public concern is quick-ly growing. More and more people demand action.This has brought on the usual run of opportunists withquick-fixes: buy an acre of rainforest. Or put an imag-inary fence around an existing forest, then claim the"carbon credits" for all the carbon in that forest.For 20 years, TREES has maintained that our country

has been heading towardan energy crisis. That ourover-dependence on fos-sil fuels is pulling usdown a path to povertyand destruction and thatour only salvation isthrough sustainablymanaging our naturalresources which means,among other things,switching to renewable,organic sources of ener-gy.

With that we maintain,and by now it should beobvious to all, that evennow there is far toomuch carbon in the global atmosphere; that this busi-ness of "reducing emissions" is already too little, toolate. It's time we get around to finding ways to getthat carbon back out of the air.

As a practical matter, the only way to do this is torestore vegetation - forests - to the world's barrenlands. Which, with your help, is just what TREESdoes.

This leads us to what just may be the good news: Agreat many people and businesses have seen this com-ing for a long time. They've done serious thinking andresearch on this development. First, looking into cost-effective ways to produce bio-fuels and with that, waysto address climate change, and the related issues ofdeforestation, declining global supplies of food andwater, and worldwide poverty.

For example, how can this new technology bringworkable alternatives to over-dependence on oil? Howcan we can develop a sustainable and massive supplyof biomass to provide ourselves, and the world, renew-able, organic fuels to meet future energy needs?

That need will be much more than could be expectedfrom agriculture in North America. To be sustainableand cost-effective this program will necessarily be

global and will provide good jobs to many workingpeople in developing countries.

Again, the reason is the high cost of energy. We liketo think that our next fuel will come from corn and soy-beans produced in our own midwest - and much of itprobably will be. But it takes a lot of high-priced ener-gy to drive the tractors that produce corn the way we

do it. On these issues,

because of ourmany years of expe-rience producingbiomass in theDeveloping World,TREES has founditself increasinglyasked to participatein many of thesediscussions. Indoing so, we'vemade the decisionto join some of thegroups working toresolve both theenergy crisis and

the environmental crisis closely entwined with it.The groups we have joined with are, in our opinion,

also working on the side of the angels. That is becausein order to be sustainable, these projects are designedto produce a great number of benefits - especially forthe environment and the people of these developingcommunities.

When the ACORE (American Council OnRenewable Energy) began an initiative called theBiomass Coordinating Council, we quickly joined andpresented our views as to why this program must beinternational. We also became a member of the newlyformed SEED Alliance. Dave Deppner was voted theirfirst president.

We see plenty of work ahead but believe this willresult in bringing even more attention and support toour own work helping communities around the worldto reforest degraded lands. While many believe thatbiofuels are something for the distant future, we pointout that Brazil managed to convert most of its vehiclesto ethanol within two years...

...showing what can be done when concerned peopledemand it.

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

380

310

320

330

340

350

360

370C

arb

on

Dio

xid

e(p

pm)

Carbon Dioxide Concentration

Monthly AverageAnnual Average

Atmospheric CO2 levels have constantly increased throughout the20th century. The current level is about 381 ppm. www.nasa.gov


I hadb e e nhome alittle lessthan twom o n t h sf r o mP a n a m a ,where Ispent twoyears inthe PeaceC o r p s ,w h e nHurricaneK a t r i n a

hit the southeast coast of the U.S. on August 29, 2005.Still unemployed, I had nothing but time to watch theunfolding horror that followed on T.V. I wanted tohelp, but the utter pandemonium at the time didn'tallow for rouge volunteers. Those without a plan gotin the way. Within a week, however, I realized oneadvantage of my statusas Returned PeaceCorps Volunteer(RPCV). FEMA need-ed bodies, and RPCVstend to be among themost willing bodiesaround. On September13, I found myselfboarding a plane toOrlando, FL to take partin Crisis Corps' firstdomestic assignment inits 45-year history.Following two days oftraining in FEMA'sIndividual AssistanceProgram (IA; the pro-gram in charge of dol-ing out the heavily pub-licized $2,000 checkcards in expedited assis-tance), fourteen RPCVswere off to BatonRouge.

CHAOTIC: Perhaps that is the best word to describethe next 60 days. We were assigned to a "DisasterRecovery Center" (DRC), managed by FEMA and rep-resentatives of organizations that were assisting theevacuees. As it happened, after almost two weeks ofwaiting for FEMA to place us, and the anticipation andsubsequent passing of Hurricane Rita, six of us weresent to Gretna just across the Mississippi River fromthe well-known French Quarter and the infamousSuperdome and Convention Center in downtown NewOrleans. On Sept. 28, one month after the initial disas-ter, the Gretna DRC opened its doors. Six RPCVs andtwo firemen sat at a long table behind 8 laptops,equipped with web-access to the IA Program and"applicant" records. The training received in Orlandocould not possibly have prepared us for what layahead: twelve hour days and endless lines of angry,frustrated, desperate people looking for answers andwaiting anywhere from four to eight hours just to hearthere case is "pending." That's what it said on the myscreen: PENDING. In FEMA's defense, they were andare dealing with a catastrophe many times larger than

Welcome Loretta: Mosquito Coast to Gulf Coast

Loretta, kneeling, leads a project design and management workshop in Palmar Abajo in central Panama.

New employee Loretta Collins

anything ever in their history and those working on theground were doing the best they could. WhenHurricane Wilma hit Florida, their too few resourceswere stretched even further.

Given everything, many of those I assisted were farmore patient than I believe I could be in the same situ-ation. Louisiana is one of the poorest states in thecountry and its citizens are no strangers to hardship. Infact, generally speaking,the affluent and insuredwere far more demandingthan the average personwho sat down in front ofme. I listened to those whosaid they would neverleave their homes, andthose who were leavingand not looking back.Those who cursed FEMA,and those who believed wewhere doing the best wecould. Screaming and cry-ing, thank you's and bless-ings. Latinos andVietnamese grateful to findsomeone speaking theirlanguage, and a few illegalaliens to whom I painfully

had to explain thatour program couldnot help (althoughthey were eligiblefor disaster foodstamps).

By mid-November,the initial shock hadworn off but the longroad still laid ahead.Many people stillhad no place to live,and it was time forme to go home.

Nine months later,what will become ofNew Orleans and thesurrounding parishes

is yet to be determined. Most predictions point toanother rough hurricane season in 2006. To illustratethe continuing need, the DRC in Gretna, and many oth-ers in the surrounding areas are still open and running,as of this printing. Americans along the Gulf Coastcontinue in the recovery effort, and are crossing theirfingers for a reprieve from Mother Nature in the com-ing months.


Welcome Loretta: Mosquito Coast to Gulf Coast

St. Bernard’s Parish one month after Katrina: Loretta walked around in six inches ofmud, gazing at the tasks laid before her and the other Crisis Corps Volunteers.

Hurricane Katrina www.nasa.gov

If you spent a week or so in a village in rural Haiti,you might come away with the impression that nobodyever cared enough to bring any useful ideas to thatplace.You'd be about right.

Brought here asslaves to work thesugar habitations ofthe French colonists,Haitians retainedonly the most basicskills of land man-agement from theirAfrican heritage.Since winning theirindependence in1804, rural Haitianshave received littletraining.

Two very differentsocieties developed.One in the city wherethere is light, educa-tion, culture, andmoney. The other inthe hills and farm-steads of the paysanswithout whom, if you think about it, life in the citieswould not have been possible. And yet, for two cen-turies, the needs of rural Haiti were, and continue to be,largely ignored.

Much of the money that brought wealth to the citiescame from timber sales. Haiti, once called the "Pearl ofthe Antilles", was rich with oak, cedar, mahogany andother valuable trees. By 1950, with modern machineryavailable, the rate of deforestation was beyond reason.Still there was, and continues to be, little official con-cern for the needs of the people of these devastatedlands.

The declining base of natural resources, with noresponse from the national leadership, has now broughtthis house of cards down so low that it's impossible tolook the other way.

The diaspora of more than two million Haitians whowere able to get out constitutes one of the greatest"brain drains" in human history. Of the remaining pop-ulation of about six million, some 40% now live in the

city of Port-au-Prince: their lands have failed them andthey come to the city seeking jobs that don't even exist.City streets? Lights? Schools? Nowhere near enough

to meet basic needs - and more people on the wayevery day.The weather is also changing: hotter year-by-year, and

the rains don't come as they used to. When they do,there are no trees to direct the water into undergroundaquifers. And so rainwater erodes hillsides and washesback to the sea: in the village where I stayed, one lightrain brought on a flash flood that drowned five goatsand a dozen chickens. By next morning, the gully wasbone dry.

In April, I (Dave) and our advisor Franz Stuppardspent two weeks in a village called Bethel, nestled inthe foothills about 30 miles north of the Capital. It's ourhope to build a seed production farm and demonstra-tion site there and work has now started. Home was ahouse next to a dry gulch looking at a barren mountainon the other side: barren but covered with goats insteadof trees.So basic lesson #1 was that there is no sense even try-

ing to restore tree cover unless we figure a better way


Haiti: Back to Basics

Dave demonstrates how to make a tree nursery for members of Bethel community who havenow launched a major reforestation campaign.

to maintain the grazing animals. That took abit of selling because people "have alwaysrun their goats up there". We showed howpeople could save money, save labor, and geta whole lot more benefit from their animalsif they carried the grass to them instead ofthe other way around. Most people said theywould give it a try. In this brief visit, we were able to help build

a local organization, demonstrate someseedbed management technology, showalternatives to the grazing systems there, andplant about 20,000 tree seedlings. Nearly allof the 200 families of Bethel want to join in. We were also able to meet community lead-

ers from other towns along the coast, includ-ing several who want to bring the idea ofshade-grown coffee to the mountains aboveSt. Marc, as well as a new group startingprojects along the Haiti-Dominican Republicborder. All ask our help and we are nowsending seeds and training materials to them.

Can Haiti solve its devastating environmental prob-lem? Certainly that's what the people of the rural com-munities want and they're already taking the lead. But

they will need a lot of help, some incentive for theirlabors, and a whole lot of basic technology. With yoursupport, we will continue to provide this - one villageat a time.


Haiti: Back to Basics

Top: Goats swarming the hillsides.Left: Max Antoine delivering a

speech during a training in Bethel.Below: Seed pods of useful trees that

are available locally.


At last we have: A MASCOT!Over the years, we have often been asked why we

don't have a mascot. After all, World Wildlife has theirPanda, GEICO has their Gecho, Bordens' has Daisy thecow and Merrill Lynch has their bull. Why don't wehave one?We've been thinking about it for a long time. Then, in

Haiti last month we met her. Her name, by theway, is Evangeline.

A goat? Why a goat? Becausewe think we, and the peo-ple we help plant trees,should have a greatdeal of sympathyand admirationfor goats. It wasduring a train-ing sessionlast month inHaiti that webegan to real-ize just howbig a role theypotentially playin our work.

First of all, goatsare too often accusedof being the bad guys,just as their owners areoften blamed (mostly by log-gers) for the destruction of the forests.In both cases that's because their needs are too oftenmis-understood. Food is one of those needs. No, goatsdon't eat tin cans, although they seem to relish the glueon the labels.But they are persistent browsers. The story goes round

- and somewhere around here we have a photo to proveit - of a goat sitting in the highest branches of a tall tree,eating the last of the leaves of that tree. With a flexiblemouth and plenty of determination, a goat can eat atree seedling right down to the roots - and then eat theroots too. If you let it. We've seen a lot of projects godown because nobody planned for stray goats (orantelopes or any other grazing animals). We've beenthere and we found ways around this.

Looking at it from the eating standpoint, goats canmake do with some fairly rough forage. They're one ofthe most efficient animals around for converting forage

into meat and milk. They're hardy. In the DevelopingWorld, they are often called the "poor man's cow".Many families think of them as their savings account,which can yield an impressive annual return if the goatis cared for well.

That's exactly the point. Evangeline and her friendsare not well cared for. They live in a village called

Bethel, where virtually no soil is left onthe hills, where the only cover left

is thorny bushes that can evendefy... a goat.

Every day Evangelineand hundreds of other

goats, along with afew horses, don-keys and cattle,are turned loosein those hills.Every day theforage supplygets more sparse

and so they walkever farther, their

sharp hooves dig-ging at the loose soil.

The rains come and thesoil, with their droppings,

is washed down the streamand to the ocean: all that vital

organic matter needed to restore theselands is lost.

Just as forestry departments around the world liketo blame the "peasants" for cutting down the forests, bynow you may be thinking it should be blamed on goats.But wait a minute. It's not the fault of the goat. As weexplained to the farmers of that village, by its verynature, the goat needs to be their best friend in bring-ing trees back to those devastated lands while, in theprocess, bringing a lot more income to their owners.

But instead, because people don’t manage these ani-mals, they're turning them into their own worst ene-mies. And so we spent a couple of days in Bethel talk-ing about how to make Evangeline and her associatesa major part of the rebuilding, rather than the continu-ing destruction, of those fragile mountains.

I just got back from Haitiwhere we are establishing atraining and seed produc-tion center. A few weeksago we attended a receptionfor the new President ofHaiti, Rene Preval, here inWashington. We hope he'llbe able to bring a respon-sive government to thatlong-suffering country. We

met quite a few of the Haitian Diaspora; more than twomillion of them live in the US and Canada.

I also recently spent some days in California, tryingto explain that there are answers to the threat of globalclimate change if enough of us are willing to worktogether. Driving up near Oxnard, I passed mile after

mile of seemingly endless fields of strawberries. Therewere people in the fields, stooping to pick the berries.

I pulled off and watched them for a while, thinking:no way, even when I was young, could I have workedthat hard, all day long - and for not much pay at that.

Later at the motel I turned on the TV. Yesterday, ourSenate passed a bill to help immigrants who are hereillegally, taking away their fears of "migrasi" and get-ting them on the path to citizenship. Today thoseSenators took it all back, both sides blaming the other.Now migrants and their children are marching in thestreets, pleading their case while enduring viscousinsults - and some beatings by our 21st century"Minutemen".

"They're breaking the law and they know it! Sendthem back or put them in jail." Would we want thosewords inscribed on our Statue of Liberty? What is this

crime they committed - trying to give their children achance for a future? If that were your family wouldn'tyou do the same? Is our country now so shriveled inspirit that we don't have a place for them?

Over the 27 years Grace and I have been married, wehave served America in some pretty tough places. ThePhilippines under the dictatorship of first, Ferdinand,then Imelda, Marcos; on to Indonesia under Suharto,and then to Somalia and M. Siyad Barre. We knowabout people suddenly disappearing and nobody want-ing to talk about it. We know about that knock on thedoor at 2:00 in the morning. We tried to get the workdone in an atmosphere of total fear in Aristide's Haiti.Like those people picking strawberries, it gave us abetter appreciation of what America can be - if we wantit to be.We came to the belief that our country would be truly

blessed if we gave amnesty to all these twelve millionpeople who somehow managed to get here becausethey know what US citizenship would mean to themand their children, and who are willing to work to gainthat - if we're willing to give them the chance.We don't expect that everyone will agree with us. But

just remember, the next time a boat load of deadHaitians washes up on a Florida beach, those familieswould never have taken that risk and they would havestayed in Haiti, if there was any chance at all theycould have had a decent life there.

Every time you help us start a village project, you'regiving more families that chance; a chance to remainproductive and successful in their own farms andhomelands. Enjoy some strawberries and think aboutit.


Opinion: How Did You Like Your Strawberries?

Strawberry pickers in California

Address change ?Duplicate Mailing?

Change as shownRemove from List

Mail Changes or Call800-643-0001

Loret Miller Ruppe CenterP.O. Box 7027

Silver Spring, Maryland 20907

Printed by wind energy on recycled paper with soy ink

p. 1 Forest Gardens & Desert Applesp. 2 News from the Ruppe Centerp. 5 Grace Birnsai & The Women of Lun p. 6 Commitment to Zambia p. 7 Another 100,000 Trees in Philippinesp. 8 TREES, Hurricanes, and Gas Pricesp. 10 Welcome Loretta: Mosquito Coast

to Gulf Coast p. 12 Haiti: Back to Basicsp. 14 At Last We Have a Mascotp. 15 How Did You Like Your Strawberries?

Inside

Call us 1-800-643-0001 to get yours

Trees for the Future is part of the Aid to Africa Federation

CFC# 9965Combined Federal Campaign

Notes

Free New Bumpersticker

Every month, Trees for the Future sends outan e-newsletter. Sign-up by going under “Jointhe Mailing List” on www.plant-trees.org andentering your email address.

E-Newsletter

The NEW Global CoolingTM Answer Bookis available. $6 Call Today

Check out our new distance agroforestry training program at:

http://www.plant-trees.org/resources.htm

Documents

Summer 2006 Newsletter