This year we bought a new farm. It was being used as pasture - but unlike most farms like this, it had many pioneer trees. Many of these trees are suitable only for wood for concrete forms - but they provide shading for the other trees that make up a perpetual forest.
Part of the land has no trees, so we will plant it out with natives hardwoods but the pioneer trees allows us to plant around them, encouraging better growth (if not speed, form) from the natives.
During the next few months we will be surveying the property and deciding which areas need to be prepared for planting, and which need to just have trees introduced to supplement the current trees.
What is obvious is that most of the best trees are gone, all that remains is pioneer and "wolf" trees with little commercial value. There is a lot of wildlife in this finca, and we are hoping to have a lot more.
We finished the survey of the farm - just in useful trees - there are 364 that have to be removed. These are the "weed" trees that have taken over. Then there are all the mishappen trees that are left, most weed trees as well. We figure there are more than 1,000 trees to remove.
All the wild areas are left alone but the pastures have a lot of trees to be removed. Any good tree will be left for the future.
As with almost all reclamation projects, it gets worse before it gets better. However, we have found some remarkable trees while doing the survey, including some that are nearly extinct. These will of course be preserved and the seeds collected to start new ones.
