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In the coming years, we will be planting a lot more trees together, which means we need a lot more seedlings. Planting seedlings is one of the main methods we use in our restoration and so to grow all these new baby trees we are building a state-of-the-art BJF nursery, with a capacity of 500,000 seedlings!

This nursery not only comes with an increased capacity, but we’ll be using the best restoration technologies meaning even higher quality seedlings and more efficiencies. The nursery will also utilise solar energy to eliminate any dependency of non-renewable energy sources and we’ll be collecting and storing rainwater during the rainy season for irrigation. In the years to come, this nursery will produce millions of new native trees.

There will be a direct impact on the region, not only by helping to replenish the native biodiversity but through job creation both in the construction and maintenance of the nursery.

With your support, construction will start in the coming months, preparing us to scale up our activities next year. It will become the center of our operations in the region and a hub for restoring life along to the Araguaia Biodiversity corridor.

If you want to know more and find out how you can help with this next crucial milestone, get in touch!

It’s that time of the year again where our field teams are in full preparation mode, making sure that when the rains come, we are ready to plant! 

It’s been an unprecedented year and our team in the field has been nothing short of incredible. Adapting and creating solutions that mean we’ve been able to carry on our work in a safe and responsible way. This becomes even more important when we start planting. Our team increases during this period with the additional local support needed to help us plant the thousands of new native trees. To keep everyone safe, strict safety precautions will be in place at all of our restoration sites and nurseries.

An additional challenge in the Araguaia region this year has been the fires that have been raging in recent weeks. To support landowners and protect the recovering biodiversity in the region, we took immediate action. Establishing an emergency fund – SOS Araguaia – to help fight the fires and establish preventative measures. We’re now actioning fire prevention strategies for the coming year to stop the same level of destruction when the fires return next year…

However, in the midst of all this, amazing progress has been made. The new trees planted in November will mark the start of our first million trees that we will be planting in partnership with Movida and OneTreePlanted. 

You may ask why we don’t plant all year round? We’d love to! However, the region where we are currently planting has extreme dry seasons, the lack of water available to new plants during this period means their chance of survival is very low. This means our planting season runs from around November to March! Now, our team in the field will be growing seedlings, sourcing the highest quality seeds, constructing fences, and beginning to prepare the land ready for planting! 

We can’t wait to share all the planting progress with you in the coming months!

On Wednesday 9th September the BJF hosted its first webinar!

At the start of this year, 11 internationally renowned scientists completed an in-depth IMPACT STUDY of the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor and we are delighted to share the results with you!

During this webinar, we explored the results of the study and held a discussion around the impact for Brazil, and the world. In a year where deforestation in the country is set to reach an all-time high, we chose to focus on how ecological restoration can become part of a more sustainable future for Brazilian Agribusiness.

During the webinar we hear from Chief Researcher Andrea Lucchesi who provided a summary of the extensive impact study, before she was joined by expert panelists:

– Rachel Biderman – Executive Director, WRI Brasil
– Marcello Brito – President, ABAG (Brazilian Agribusiness Association)
– Ingo Isernhagen – Forest Conservation Researcher, EMBRAPA

Each provided a new perspective on the prospects and challenges associated with looking to large-scale restoration as a catalyst for changing how land use is approached in Brazil. You can see a summary of their points below:

Rachel Biderman

Rachel spoke about the experience of WRI with ecological restoration, highlighting the importance of having an economic revenue for the landowner. There must in general be benefits for local communities, products that they may take in a sustainable way from the newly restored forest.

Also, to enable a project the size of ours, there must be a huge investment in research and development, something BJF is already doing and that WRI invests in extensively. She noted the extensive knowledge base building in Brazilian civil society and the necessity to collaborate for a shared future.

Ingo Isernhagen

Ingo spoke about the challenge of restoring some of the Cerrado physiognomies, such as open grasslands, and how techniques must be improved yearly in order to have the best restoration possible. Going on to add that in the corridor region, there is a wide variety of landowner profiles, each one with a specific need (ecologically and economically). So, it is important to know how to approach each one of these profiles. Again all leading back to the need to conduct an in-depth analysis of each restoration site.

Marcello Brito

Marcello spoke about how the restoration agenda was, until very recently, a marginal topic for landowners. Now, that scenario has changed. But information still needs to be available for landowners, especially about the benefits they could get from ecological restoration. He also discussed how many people in the Amazon region never access the formal economy. It is hard for them to be “legal” because there’s no knowledge available, and no resources. One of the crucial points of value he sees in the work of the BJF, is the provision of this knowledge and resource base that is so far inaccessible for many landowners.

We are so grateful for all who participated, helped to explore a topic that has the potential to change the environmental landscape in Brazil, and beyond.

If you weren’t able to join us on the day, watch the recording here…

This recording will soon also be available with English subtitles, sign up here to receive this!

Jan Zandbergen has been the proud sponsor of the Black Jaguar Foundation (BJF) since 2015, and this month renewed their membership with the BJF. For them, the recent events have meant that supporting sustainable initiatives has never been more vital.

“Exactly with what is going on, we choose to continue to support BJF. Restoring our planet is now more important than ever. Oxygen, sufficient fresh water and plants that are necessary for making medicines, nature provides it all for us. We should cherish that.” – Peter-Paul Zandbergen, CEO

While supporting our reforestation work in Brazil, Jan Zandbergen is also making changes to their own business in the Netherlands. “As a family business, we are very aware of the importance of caring for future generations,” said Jochem Versloot, grandson of Jan Zandbergen and director, co-owner of the company. “We are therefore continuously looking for sustainable improvements in our business processes.”

These improvements have included diversifying their range and adding plant-based products, under the new branding, PLNT, and they have recently also been looking closely at their logistics operations, making the more sustainable choice to opt for new, lower carbon LNG trucks, which save on average 20% of the CO2 emissions.

Read more about why Jan Zandbergen chooses to support the Black Jaguar Foundation and how they’re working towards a more sustainable future…

Also in 2020, Jan Zandbergen chooses to support the Black Jaguar Foundation – Jan Zandbergen

Jan Zandbergen has been the proud sponsor of the Black Jaguar Foundation (BJF) since 2015. BJF is an international non-profit organization committed to the realization of the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor, in the heart of Brazil, and thus one of the largest reforestation projects in South America.

We were honoured to be awarded the Prestige Award for the Reforestation Project of the Year! Shining a light on businesses and organisations making a real impact in Amsterdam and beyond. We are thrilled to have been selected for this award, standing out both for the scale and uniqueness of our project.

Judges also commented on the tone of hope that we bring amidst growing, global environmental concerns. It’s amazing to get this recognition and we will work to keep bringing you hope in these times of uncertainty! 

There are very few reforestation projects in the world as ambitious as the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor and we are all extremely proud to be working for such an inspiring cause. We hope you’ll join us in helping to preserve our planet and creating a brighter future for us all!

After many months of collaboration, we are proud to present to you the new Black Jaguar Foundation logo! In particular, we would like to name and thank the incredibly skilled designer of the logo, Sjoerd van Schaaijk, dedicating so much time to help and the progress of this re-green mission. We cannot thank him enough for this!

We love our old logo and we’re sad to see it go, but as the Black Jaguar Foundation develops, so must our logo. Our mission is simple. To plant 1.7 billion trees and create the longest biodiversity corridor on earth. Our new logo is a more accurate representation of this!

In our infancy, we were motivated to act by the drastic destruction of the habitat which the Black Jaguar once called home. Now, rather than focusing on the destruction, we focus on new life. The urgent and rebellious has made way for the constructive and healing. 

The Jaguar eyes remain to reinforce our name and to keep some continuity with our previous logo. However now, where there was once a footprint, representing the damage left by mankind, we now show a tree. Representing the potential for mankind to change, to learn and to create new life, where previously there has been only destruction. You may even notice the Araguaia Corridor dividing the two parts of this tree; representing the old degraded land, and the new revitalised forest. 

This new logo reflects the evolution of the foundation and embodies the hope of our mission. It represents the instrumental work being done by all of the BJF team and our community of loyal and committed supporters. 

We all have the power to change and our new logo is just one small indication of this. We are excited for you to join us in the next crucial phase of our mission, with more hope and determination than ever.

Here’s a look at one of our recently re-greened areas, restored via the direct seeding method just months ago…

One Tree Planted is partnering with the Black Jaguar Foundation! At One Tree Planted, their mission is simple – to make it easy for people to plant trees and help the environment. More people planting trees means more life and more hope for the future!

Partnering with local communities and people planting trees around the world, OneTreePlanted is building a global community, committed to creating positive. The Black Jaguar Foundation is now part of this Global Community and OneTreePlanted has committed to helping realise the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor with the co-financing of our first million trees!

As part of this partnership, we are honoured to have been matched with Arsenal football player Héctor Bellerín, to be the recipient organisation for his campaign to donate £3000 per arsenal win this season. This is an amazing example of how people from different places and different walks of life can work together to preserve our planet and we are so excited to welcome Héctor Bellerín on board this epic reforestation mission!
Read more about the campaign…

Bellerin

Thanks to Arsenal Football Club’s Hector Bellerin, One Tree Planted will plant 3,000 trees for every game the team wins starting in June, 2020! Fans can further contribute to this goal in order to make the biggest possible impact for the environment.

See some of the seedlings that will make up this million trees…

OneTreePlanted knows that the impact of reforestation is extensive. It’s crucial to rebuild forests after fires and floods, it has a major impact for the creation of jobs, and it restores biodiversity preserving our planet and it’s vital resources. This is to name just a few of the impacts we see when we plant trees.

These first million trees will be planted predominantly in the state of Para, in the transition zone between the Cerrado savanna and the Amazon rainforest. This is the region where our nurseries are currently located and where we are already building a close community of landowners and partners, working with individuals and groups from the local region to help stimulate local economic growth and nurture sustainable alternatives to traditional agricultural practices.

In the recent Green Capital study, which looked at the total impact that the complete restoration of the Araguaia Biodiversity study will have on the local and global community, job production and revenue gained by the landowner were among the major social impacts predicted. These are in addition to the major environmental impact for our planet.

See some of the preliminary results below, full study to be released soon!

We are thrilled to be working with such an innovative, committed organisation that shares our dream of a much, much greener future!

Degradation of a given area may happen in different intensities, according to land use. A forest or a savanna that was cut down to be used as pasture land has more potential of recovery than an area where grains are cultivated, for example.

Therefore, there are some conditions in which an ecosystem can recover itself with little or no human interference. If degradation hasn’t destroyed the seed bank in the soil, for example, it can germinate and re-establish the ecosystem, at least partially.

Our technicians are trained in detecting which sites have higher potential of recovering. In some cases, all it takes to restore one given site is to remove the degradation factors themselves. If degradation is being caused by cattle grazing for example, we must build a fence to keep cattle away. Once we detect sprouting trees, bushes and native grasses, we must assist them by controlling competing plants and even fertilizing the soil.  All interventions aim at accelerating the recovery that would otherwise take much longer. Monitoring will indicate if other actions should be necessary.

Natural regeneration is, then, an effective and low-cost restoration technique. However, it should only be applied in sites that haven’t gone through severe degradation, in these cases we must prepare the land intensively so it is ready for us to plant new seeds and seedlings! 

These are more areas located in the Cerrado savanna that our forest engineers have assessed and concluded that they need minimal intervention from our restoration teams. These sites presented all the necessary elements to restore themselves naturally, so we will simply remove any clear degradation factors, monitor the progress, and let nature do the rest!