We left Mendoza and headed to Curitiba in Brazil. The forest in which we have invested, Araucária, is suffering from an illness that means the trees have not grown properly over the past year and the leaves are visibly shrivelling up.
The forest is now 6 years old and would usually grow for a total of 12 years before being cut down for the wood. However, the advice is that we should cut down the trees now and start again with new trees as these current ones will not grow any more. Unfortunately, they are not worth much in wood either but we don’t have much choice. We visited the forest with Henrique and Juarez who explained the problem and the possible solutions. We will plant new trees - still Eucalyptus - but a different clone which is not susceptible to this disease. The final outcome will still be the same - protecting primary rain forest and providing wood to the paper plants - just with a delay.
With the SLB do Brasil team L-R: Juarez, Stéphane, Matthew, Joanne, Alistair, Henriqué