How to Request Changing Tree Species

The organizations that receive finance from TerraFund for AFR100, herein called restoration champions, sign agreements with TerraFund to grow trees and restore degraded landscapes. In that agreement, each partner specifies the total number of trees to be planted and the total number of trees to be restored per tree species, after 6 years of implementation.

Every six months, restoration champions report the number of seedlings or saplings that they have grown in their nurseries, broken down by species, and the number of trees that they have planted and/or naturally regenerated on each restoration site, also broken down by species.

While implementing the project, champions may find themselves in a situation that justify the revision of the species that they grow.

Before replacing, changing or removing species, restoration champions should request officially the authorization from TerraFund for AFR100 by contacting their Project Manager with a signed document, which clearly highlights:

• The ecological characteristics of new tree species compared to the ones to be replaced.
• The socio-economic benefits of new tree species compared to those of the tree species to be replaced.
• The motivation of changing tree species (community needs, budget issues, project timeline, seed availability, etc).
• How changing the tree species will contribute to the success of the project or how not changing the proposed tree species will affect the project negatively. 
• The tangible facts that demonstrate an absolute necessity to change the initial tree species.
• The new number of trees by species for all species that we have in the agreement, including the added species.

The proposed change should not represent more than 30% of the trees associated with the project; native trees cannot be replaced with non-native trees; fruit tree species cannot be changed to non-fruit tree species; and trees cannot be replaced with non-tree species (e.g. bananas, passion fruit, papaya, tree tomato, coffee or shrubs).

If a restoration champion changes tree species without the official authorization, the number of trees planted of any species that do not appear in the agreement cannot be counted toward the project’s total. This could jeopardize his agreement.