On average*, it costs £5,000 to restore a hectare of Kinabatangan rainforest maintain it for 3 years.
Our costs include:
- Collecting seeds and growing saplings.
- Travel to planting areas.
- Clearing grasses and vines to give the saplings the best chance of survival.
- Tagging and monitoring the trees along with regular maintenance for the first 3 years.
- Establishment of botanical plots and monitoring work in support of the science.
* We work across a number of different sites, with different challenges and conditions, such as soil type, flooding frequency, and level of degradation. We select an appropriate mix of native trees for each area and work around any surviving trees. As a result, the number of saplings needed to restore a hectare to its optimum density can vary, for example, a seasonally flooded peatland forest requires planting at a higher density than a floodplain forest. The deliberate choice to take on sites which are known to be challenging to restore will mean that the tree survival rates will also vary and some trees will need to be replaced. We publish our locations and planting densities for transparency and accountability.