Forest regeneration project puts tools in community hands

A Griffith University-led project is working with Soloman Island communities to test different ways of restoring forests to benefit local residents and revitalise ecosystems.

The Livelihoods in Forest Ecosystem Recovery project is helmed by Griffith's Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security Director Professor Helen Wallace for ACIAR, who said there was a critical need to find ways to restore the forests in Solomon Islands.

LIFER is a six-year project that began in January 2023, building on a pilot project funded by the US Forest Service on Kolombangara Island.

• Treatment 1 will serve as the control, with protection but no active effort to restore the forest.
• Treatment 2 is ‘assisted natural regeneration’ where weeding and thinning, for instance, will be used to help valuable species re-establish themselves.
• Treatment 3 is ‘enrichment’ and includes management activities and replanting trees that communities have identified as important for future use.
• Treatment 4 is a more intensive ‘agroforestry’ approach, with substantial planting of timber species, along with other useful tree and food crops.

Professor Wallace said the first steps involved talking to communities about how they use their forests and what they want and need from future forests.

The LIFER project will fund participating communities to maintain the trial sites during the life of the project and to help monitor tree growth, biodiversity and livelihood benefits.

"We really want to empower local women and give them a voice in forest management and promote leadership in forest governance. This will include working with the National Council of Women," Professor Wallace said.