In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert

[jpak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/africa/11niger.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

GUIDAN BAKOYE, Niger — In this dust-choked region, long seen as an increasingly barren wasteland decaying into desert, millions of trees are flourishing, thanks in part to poor farmers whose simple methods cost little or nothing at all.

In Tahoua, where women have regenerated once-barren fields by digging manure pits, women mill their grain by pounding it with wooden pestles.

Better conservation and improved rainfall have led to at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres in Niger, researchers have found, achieved largely without relying on the large-scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification, the process by which soil loses its fertility.

Recent studies of vegetation patterns, based on detailed satellite images and on-the-ground inventories of trees, have found that Niger, a place of persistent hunger and deprivation, has recently added millions of new trees and is now far greener than it was 30 years ago.

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[trotsky]

1. Wow, some environmental GOOD news for a change.

This is great to hear.

[kestrel91316]

2. Give them a tiny loan from the Grameen Bank and I bet they

could do 10 times more!

Stories like this give me hope for the Third World. I still have little hope for the industrialized world.

[mainegreen]

3. That is good news.

The growth of the Sahara has scared me since I was a child. Nice to see someone winning against it.

[Cassandra]

4. Some of the desertification...

is caused by overgrazing.

[jwirr]

5. What difference would it make if the project was a large-scale

planting of trees? It seems to me that plant a tree is the object not how many are planted at once. I noticed the Heifer,Inc. is also giving trees to be planted. There must be other organizations that could be used to see that these CO2 eaters are replaced.