La Pedregoza Natural Reserve's first partner is
Amazonia Reforestation, the entity our founders represent and the
entity that created our natural reserve. Despite the fact that
Amazonia is a commercial enterprise that plants, grows
and harvests tropical hardwood trees, it believes in acting in an
environmentally sustainable manner. Together with our natural reserve and
others, Amazonia is actively engaged in the collection
of native tree seeds and the discovery of the best ways to germinate those
seeds in tree nurseries and the best time to transplant the seedlings for
future forest.
Amazonia Reforestation has an official policy of planting and
caring for native trees and fruit trees as a means of expanding habitat for
endangered wildlife and the long term conservation of native trees threatened
by past logging practices and indiscriminate clearing.
We are proud to be associated with the world-renowned
Omacha Foundation, which has been instrumental in establishing
our natural reserve. Omacha has assisted in the registration process,
provided advice on numerous logistical issues and helped with our native
tree nursery program. They are the entity that will conduct a biological
inventory of La Pedregoza Natural Reserve, as well as set up motion
sensors for night photography, so that we can track our noctural residents
in the gallery and inundation forests. There is a formal Memorandum of
Understanding between our organizations, making this a partnerhip in fact
as well as practice. We are committed to being part of the larger conservation
and preservation program for the protection of Orinoco basin flora and fauna
that the
Omacha Foundation represents. We look forward to working with Omacha
in future years, especially benefitting from their experience when we set up our
river turtle hatchery facility and program.
A very important partnership for La Pedregoza Natural Reserve is the
link between the University of Alberta's ("U of A") Faculty of
Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences and our founders.
Thanks to the vision shown by the U of A there is a Memorandum
of Understanding in place between us and their institution, which includes
making use of our natural reserve for studies and research into numerous
areas of science and other disciplines. One study being planned involves
carbon sequestration by tropical trees and the soil they grow in. Within the
Faculty there is also a
Department of Rural Economy, with plans for a study
on the impact of reforestation on equatorial forest comunities. This
partnership promises to benefit the natural reserve, science and graduate students
in both Canada and Colombia. We have no doubt that this relationship will
grow and expand in future years and that La Pedregoza Natural Reserve will
figure prominently in many instances.
Another partner is the
CO2 Tropical Trees program, which plants tropical trees
for carbon sequestration purposes in the fight against climate change. The
average tropical tree planted by CO2 Tropical Trees sequesters or captures
50 lbs or 22.6 kg of carbon a year, so for instance 250 tropical trees planted
balance the annual CO2 emissions of the average North American car (12,100 lbs
as per the E.P.A.). CO2 Tropical Trees will assist La Pedregoza Natural Reserve
by funding the planting of native species of tropical trees, many of which
have excellent carbon sequestration capacity. This means that industries or
fleets looking to balance their CO2 emissions or to neutralize their
carbon footprint can purchase CO2 Tropical Tree planting services,
which in turn leads to the planting of native tree species for expanded
wildlife habitat at our natural reserve.
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