Community Seed Exchange

Every community forest in the programme will need to collect as many mature seeds as possible so they have an ongoing seed bank. It is important to keep the tree nursery growing trees both indigenous and exotic to meet the replanting quotas for the community forest’s sustainability. Workers will need to identify good mother trees throughout the community forest and monitor the proper times to harvest the seeds. These collected seeds must be kept in a cool secure location that is free of rodents, insects, and disease. The name of the species and the date of harvest should be clearly marked on the container. Adding a number to identify the mother tree would add to good recordkeeping. Don’t keep surplus seeds past their viability date (good to plant). A community forest seed exchange will be available and managed by the Agency. This is where community forests can exchange their surplus seeds with other community forests for their surplus seeds. We need to make sure every community forest has enough seeds to meet their reforestation goals. From time to time the Agency will introduce new fuelwood species that the community forests can test.