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Julia Silveira

Jun 29
Love4

The Araguaia Seed Network takes part in a leading Seed Collective Conference!

By News Home

The Araguaia Seed Network is an initiative started by the Black Jaguar Foundation to provide seeds for our mission of ecological restoration that has already shown great benefits to local communities and the Araguaia Biodiversity corridor. The initiative is relatively young, and we would like to develop it so that it can reach its full potential in generating a positive impact for society and the planet. That’s why we take pride in learning from other seed collectives!  

 This month, the Black Jaguar Foundation, represented by Laís D’Isep (Seed Production Analyst) participated in the 2nd Annual Redário Conference, which brought together 22 different seed collectives in Brazil! Many interesting and engaging workshops were also offered as part of their “Weaving Webs and Spreading Seeds”  project, which took place in parallel to the conference.  

RSA_Redario_2023_1
RSA_Redario_2023_3

The event consisted of three days filled with activities, workshops, and lectures in the city of Alto Paraíso de Goiás, bringing together representatives from 22 seed networks from all over Brazil.

“Weaving Networks and Spreading Seeds” Project

With the aim of strengthening and structuring seed collector groups in the Cerrado region, the workshops covered topics such as communication, teamwork, and gender equity.

Here’s a glimpse of what Ana Lúcia and Eunice, collectors from the Araguaia Seed Network, learned during these first days:

The project is implemented by the Cerrado Seed Network and financed by the Resilient Cerrado Project – CERES, through the Fund for the Promotion of Ecossocial Productive Landscapes (PPP-ECOS) managed by the Population Society Nature Institute (ISPN).

II Annual Meeting of the Redário Seed Network

The Redário offers a space for Seed Networks and their partners to come together. By collecting seeds together with local communities, they are able to strengthen the economic market, present innovative solutions, and scale up ecological restoration in Brazil.

At the meeting, representatives from 22 Seed Networks, as well as researchers and other partners, were present to promote the exchange of experiences and contribute to establishing a structure for the Redário.

The event’s activities included: presentations by each of the Seed Networks present, seed collection, processing, and storage, legislation and formalising seed networks, and group discussions on public policies.

Read what Ana Lúcia and Eunice have to share with us about the knowledge gained during the Redário Meeting:

“These meetings are extremely important for us because they allow us to share and learn from other collectives that have been active for a longer time. This way, we can generate an even greater positive impact with the Araguaia Seed Network!”

Have a look at what Ana Lúcia and Eunice have to share with us about the knowledge gained during the Redário Meeting:

These meetings are extremely important for us because they allow us to share and learn from other collectives that have been active for a longer time. This way, we can generate an even greater positive impact with the Araguaia Seed Network!

Would you like to support this and other initiatives of the Black Jaguar Foundation? Join the First 600 and become part of our movement!
Jun 29
Love7

FIDUC DAY: Investing in a healthier planet

By News Home

As of this month, FIDUC, an investment management company, is launching a new system where all new financial planners donate a tree to join their network. Together, we are investing in a healthier planet for future generations!

About FIDUC

As the number of investment platforms grows by the day, FIDUC, a start-up aiming to move away from traditional banking systems, offers a new solution.

Hoping to make the world of investment more accessible and democratic, FIDUC opens itself up to clients that are only able to invest relatively low amounts, all the way to profitable multinational companies.

The company was founded by Pedro Guimarães and Camila Requena. Find out more about their investment model on their website

Planting Trees with the Black Jaguar Foundation

FIDUC network is promoting a permanent campaign so that we can do some good together! With every donation, you also receive a personalised tree certificate, showing where your trees will be planted. This certificate  is emitted within 10 days.

Have a look at an example of  the tree certificate emitted for FIDUC’s investors and team:

Make your donation today and contribute to the realisation of the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor!

JOIN US!

Jun 28
Love1

Meet our new BJF Sponsor and Corporate Friend: Mutsy!

By News Home

A warm welcome to the Mutsy company, one of the latest members of the BJF corporate  community! Mutsy creates beautiful strollers with our future generations in mind.

Mutsy was kindly directed to the Black Jaguar Foundation by our partner Sumthing: a platform that is working hard to create a visibly nature positive world. Together with Sumthing, we are growing the Mutsy forest!

As a brand, Mutsy strives to combine innovation, sustainability and exploration. That’s why we have partnered to create the Mutsy forest, which will become part of the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor.

Below, you can see some of the BJF team in shirts sponsored by Mutsy, growing seedlings that will become resilient trees:

The Mutsy history dates back to 1937 and is one of innovation and design. This DNA enables them to look towards the future and the contemporary lifestyle of the parents of today.

Find out more about Mutsy on their website and become part of the Mutsy experience: sweet strolls, smart future.

Would you like to grow your own forest and join us in realising one of the longest biodiversity corridors on Earth? Become one of the First 600 to join our mission of hope and action HERE.

Jun 26
Love9

Have a look at the incredible growth of our trees!

By Invisible on news page

Two years ago, we planted many native trees, of only 30 cm in height. Now, many of these trees have grown to over four meters high!

We have also been finding regenerating species that were not planted by us, which is one of the best signs that our ecological restoration efforts are working. None of this would have been possible without all of the support we receive from our wonderful sponsor partners. Thank you for your commitment to realising the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor.  Below, please see a video message from our initiator Ben Valks, straight from the field!

These healthy and resilient trees, growing at the heart of the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor, are only the start. It motivates us to see how far our restoration efforts have come, and we look forward to planting many more trees!  

Jun 23
Love4

Royal De Heus wins Dutcham prize and opens 6th Factory in Brazil

By Invisible on news page

Royal De Heus, one of BJF’s international partners  won one of the Dutch-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (Dutcham)’s  sustainability awards and opened their sixth factory in Brazil! We are excited to see how Royal De Heus is working towards making food production more sustainable. Keep reading for some of De Heus’ most recent milestones in 2023.

Dutch-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce’s Inspire Award Dinner
BJF_NL_June_2023_Dutcham
NL_71_De Hues_2023

Thanks to the generous invitation from our long-term partner De Heus, the Black Jaguar Foundation able to participate in the Inspire Award Dinner, organised by the Dutch-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce. This major event in São Paulo was hosted by the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte.

It was a great night!  De Heus Brazil won one of the 4 Inspire Awards for their Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, partly because of their partnership with the Black Jaguar Foundation. 

The “Dutcham Inspire Awards 2023” is an initiative that selects the most inspiring projects of 2022 in the field of a more sustainable and socially responsible business conduct in Brazil.  This year, De Heus Brasil’s sustainability program, Responsible Feeding, joined forces with the Wow Project in 2022, which aimed to address specific common issues. The project’s focus was on providing a “Transformative Look” focussing on the issue of plastic waste, which negatively impacts ecosystems worldwide. De Heus organized a voluntary cleanup event in cities where their offices are located. They collected more than six tons of waste, which was sent to recycling cooperatives. 

Further, De Heus visited the Black Jaguar Foundations’ project in Santana do Araguaia to see how their donations are greatly contributing to our process of ecological restoration process and helping us bring back biodiversity.  

During the event, our Planting season video was played on the big screen for all of the corporate and diplomatic leaders present, such as Mrs. Ingrid Thijssen (President of VNO-NCW), the Dutch Ambassador for Brazil and corporate leaders of other Dutch multinationals in Brazil.

At the end of the event, we also distributed some seeds that are native to the Araguaia Region:
Opening of De Heus 6th Factory

At the start May, our loyal partner Royal De Heus also inaugurated their new factory in Itaberaí (Goiás)! The event welcomed around 400 participants and was a big success.

The CEOs of Royal de Heus, Mr. Koen De Heus and Mr. Co De Heus, and the president of De Heus Brasil, Rinus Donkers, were also all present at the opening of the 6th Royal de Heus factory.

We are excited to see how Royal De Heus is expanding and working towards a making food production more sustainable.

A big thank you to Royal De Heus for inviting us to this wonderful event and ensuring that the Black Jaguar Foundation was present in all aspects of it! Below, you can see pictures of our planting season video, played on loop throughout the event, the seeds participants could pick up at the very prominent BJF corner, and pictures made and printed directly at the event – all of which also included the BJF logo!

4. Example BJF presense
6. Corporate Brochure De Heus_BR
6b. BJF De Heus_gift to visitorspng
2000 pics taken at the event
Would you like to support this and other initiatives of the Black Jaguar Foundation? Join the First 600 and become part of our movement!
Jun 23
Love5

The BJF Nursery has been producing seedlings for 1 year!

By News Home

In June 2022, we began seedling production at the Black Jaguar Foundation Nursery, one of the largest in the region, with the capacity to produce up to 500,000 seedlings per planting season.

Over the past 12 months, our nursery team has faced numerous challenges, gained valuable knowledge, and achieved remarkable accomplishments. We can proudly say that we are very proud of the results we have achieved so far.

Black Jaguar Foundation Nursery: From Construction to the First 500,000 Seedlings
Starting Construction of the BJF’s Large-Scale Nursery

In March 2021, the Black Jaguar Foundation partnered with Santana do Araguaia’s City Hall to build a large-scale nursery. The city granted us 3.6-hectares of land in the municipality’s Environmental Park.  After an extensive construction process, the nursery is now successfully producing resilient seedlings, storing our seeds, and even serving as a space for environmental education.

Starting Seedling Production

After a year of construction, we officially began seedling production in our nursery. To accomplish this, our Seedling Production Coordinator, Norivânia Diniz, trained and led our dedicated nursery team, determined to achieve ambitious goals and plant as many trees as possible. Thanks to their great efforts, our results for the last planting season were incredible.

Over the months, we saw the area transform into a nursery full of life. Little by little, our nursery became completely green:

Black Jaguar Foundation Nursery: A Space for Environmental Education

As well as producing and caring for our seedlings, the BJF Nursery Team also shared their knowledge of seedlings with the numerous groups that visited the BJF Nursery. Political representatives, university and technical students, children, and other government agencies were all able to see firsthand the work carried out by the Black Jaguar Foundation.

We are extremely happy to see that local institutions view us as an example of environmental restoration and care!

Achievements in the Last 12 Months

As you may have noticed, the past year has been full of hard work! Still, despite all the challenges, our nursery team successfully grew enough seedlings for the last planting season and are already producing for the next rainy season.

Thanks to their great work and dedication, we achieved:

  • Over 35 germinated species
  • Over 300,000 seedlings produced for the 22/23 planting season
  • Over 1,200 kg of seeds collected by the Araguaia Seed Network
Incredible, isn’t it? To support the Black Jaguar Foundation’s Nursery and enable us to produce even more healthy and resilient seedlings for the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor, please contact us at contact@black-jaguar.org
Jun 14
Love4

Have you already read our feature in Reuters?

By News Home

The Black Jaguar Foundation was featured on the homepage of Reuters! Have you already read the extensive article?

At the start of this month, Reuters published a Special Report on the challenges of restoring the Amazon.We are very honoured that we have been selected for the investigative report, among the two leading organisations in Brazil carrying out ecological restoration.

WATCH A VIDEO SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE

READ THE ARTICLE

Besides the hard challenges voiced throughout the article, we also believe in opportunities. At Black Jaguar Foundation we focus on how we can, and are making the difference together with the local farmers.

Bringing back biodiversity, water, jobs, healthy soils, hope!, win-win partnership with farmers, to fight the climate crisis in two of the most vital ecosystems on Earth.

The video coverage of the article has already been aired in a message of hope on several news channels in Europe and the USA this week.

We are looking forward to your feedback and ever ongoing support. Thank you for being with us and continuing to support us…to make the impossible possible. Creating a positive impact for all future generations … together!

JOIN US!

May 25
Love0

The Importance of Biodiversity

By News Home

At Black Jaguar Foundation we are realising one of the world’s longest biodiversity corridors, connecting the Amazon Rainforest and Cerrado Savanna.

But what is biodiversity and why is it so important? Our Articulation Coordinator, Marcelle Grumberg, explains below: 

From the plankton in our seas to the jaguars skulking through our forests, biodiversity is the varied and distinct totality of all life forms on earth. For any ecosystem to remain healthy and alive, it must maintain its biodiversity. This is because different species perform different tasks within an ecosystem, and it is the culmination of all these tasks that keep the ecosystem functioning and alive. Just like how a multinational business wouldn’t be able to run without a combination of CEO’s, managers and interns – an ecosystem can’t survive without a synergetic mix of predators and prey, herbivores and omnivores, flora and fauna.

Healthy ecosystems provide us with critical services and natural products necessary for international human survival.  For instance, our rainforests provide us with clean water, oxygen, food and medicine.

These critical services and products are necessary for our global development and contribute towards the UN’s seventeen sustainable development goals (see below). These goals were set by the United Nations general assembly in 2015 and are the seventeen key initiatives that need to be maintained if we are to transform our world and begin to develop sustainably, ensuring our survival as a species. Examples of these goals are: eradicating poverty, abolishing food insecurity, maintaining clean water and sanitation for everybody living worldwide. Find out more about the sustainable development goals and how the BJF mission will promote each of them here and below:

How does the BJF project promote biodiversity? 

We have invested a huge portion of our time and resources into ensuring that we have the best technical partners, forest engineers and team in Brazil to realize biodiversity in the corridor. Our goal is not just to reforest but also to ecologically restore the Araguaia. With each hectare of land, we aim to methodically map out the area and plant an extensive mix of seeds, bringing back the rich and varied expanse of nature that once reigned.

We need nature now more than ever, and with the decade of restoration and eyes on biodiversity, we are taking action on the frontlines in Brazil. Restoring vital ecosystems that we, and our future generations need. Our forests are our life source. They are vital for all, for our future, for our climate and for the livelihoods of our local community and beyond. Covid-19 has made it all the clearer that the large-scale destruction of nature and its biodiversity comes at a huge cost. As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, it is time to act now and join our mission of hope and action.

Last year saw an increase in attention for biodiversity, with the hosting of the COP15, the release of the 7th report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) IPCC, and increased support for the UN Decade of Restoration, among others. We are a proud official actor for the Decade of Restoration, and that we thrilled to see what this decade will bring for biodiversity and restoration.

Nature has already shown its power in the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor. What was barren land five years ago is now a forest bursting with life. The right mix of native trees encourages other plants to grow, birds to scatter seeds and small animals to find a home, leading other plants to grow and even more animals to thrive. Planting trees is the first step to encourage nature to take over and biodiversity to flourish again.

The above image shows Field Coordinator, Carlos Eduardo Oliveira, next to a tree after one year, and the growth of the same restoration site after two years.
At Black Jaguar Foundation we have just one, but ambitious goal: restoring biodiversity together!
May 25
Love2

11 years of The New Brazilian Forest Code

By News Home

The New Brazilian Forest Code – Law nº 12.651/2012 – was implemented 11 years ago today. This law is responsible for ensuring the preservation of part of the native vegetation present in rural properties in Brazil.  

Since the Black Jaguar Foundation was established on the basis of this law, we decided to take this opportunity to give you brief overview of how it enables the preservation of native vegetation in the Araguaia region.   

Let’s have a closer look at the Brazilian Forest Code together:

Legal Reserves: Percentages of native vegetation that should be maintained, restored, or compensated, in rural properties in Brazil:

Within the legal Amazon (Amazon regions in the states of Mato Gross, Pará, Acre, Tocantins, Amazonas, Roraima, Amapá, and part of Maranhão), the following percentages of the rural properties must be preserved:

  • 80% of the property when its vegetation belongs to a forest region.  
  • 35% of the property when its vegetation belongs to a savanna region (like the Cerrado Savanna, for example) 
  • 20% of the property when the vegetation belongs to a grassland.  

Outside of the legal Amazon (falling beyond the scope of the states listed above) 

  • 20% of the property regardless of the type of vegetation present (including forest, Savanna, Caatinga or grasslands) 

Permanent Preservation Areas (APPs) : These are regions that have been established by Brazilian legislation in which the conservation of native vegetation is mandatory.  APPs can be found on the marginal strips of any natural water course that is perennial or intermittent, as well as in other special situations, like hilltops, “veredas” (treeless grasslands on seasonally waterlogged soil), and in the borders of “chapadas”(tablelands).   

A perennial water course is one which naturally has a water flow throughout the entire year  while an Intermittent water course is one whose water flow stops at certain seasons of the year.    

These are different from Legal Reserves in that their demarcation is linked to specific characteristic of the landscape. 

 For instance, in the surrounding areas of rivers, at least 30 meters alongside each riverbank will be a Permanent Preservation Area. The issue here is that these criteria do not necessarily require restoration, only preservation. This may pose challenges and questions concerning how to realise ecological restoration in these regions. 

Keep in mind: Rural landowners are able to include Permanent Preservation Areas in the percentage of the Legal Reserve preserved for native vegetation to comply with the forest code, but only in specific situations. One of the conditions for this is that no deforestation will have ocured in the property after the 22nd of July of 2008.   

How does The Black Jaguar Foundation assist rural landowners in complying with the Brazilian Forest code?

It is important to follow the law, and ask for help from specialised professionals when needed.  

The Black Jaguar Foundation offers free support to landowners to assist them in the ecological restoration needed to comply with the Brazilian Forest Code. We asked our field team to explain how this works! Watch their video below and find out more: 

How are we carrying out our project?   

The Black Jaguar Foundation’s technical team is present in all stages that involve 

the environmental suitability of your property. Find out how we carry out the processes of ecological restoration below:  

Would you like to find out more about how we are working together with rural landowners in the Araguaia Region? Get in touch with us at partners@black-jaguar.org and find out how you can contribute to aligning food production and environmental preservation!