The Dabari Lan tribe carries water to plant trees, rebuilding the destroyed forest with their own hands
"In the past, our mountain was all Malabar chestnut. The Malabar chestnut just has high economic value, but it is very bad for the forest, it crowds out native trees, and it cannot serve as food for wild animals. Now we want to plant the native forest back."
In Wutai Township, Pingtung County, there is the Dabalilan Rukai tribe. In the tribe there is a family that has vowed to plant Taiwan's native trees back one by one; Sula and his wife Dresedrese returned to the tribe in the mountains, and followed his elderly father in carefully tending this mountain forest, tending it for more than twenty years.
Forty years ago, they watched as illegal loggers and timber merchants hauled the mountain's great trees down the mountain truckload by truckload; afterward the Forestry Bureau planted high-economic-value Malabar chestnut. The fast-growing Malabar chestnut quickly took over large stretches of forest, crowded out Taiwan's native tree species, and drove wild animals away. "No wild animals, only Malabar chestnut, this kind of forest ecology is very abnormal!" sighed Dresedrese.
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Crowdfunding to lay water pipes, inviting everyone to adopt the mountain forest
"After the saplings are planted, they must be watered continuously for thirty days, until new shoots grow. So now we all have to carry water over from the other side of the mountain to irrigate the small saplings." Sula often has to spend two or three hours driving to transport water from Jingbu Mountain to Damumu Mountain, and then carry the water up the mountain by manpower.
Running back and forth trip after trip, just so the small saplings have water to drink; Dresedrese said that in recent years they have also been constantly searching for a suitable water source, "A good water source is really not easy to find. You have to spend three or four years observing, to make sure there is still a bit of water in the dry season, before it can count as a suitable water source." It took three or four years, and they finally found a suitable water source, but there was no water pipeline, "Laying a new water pipeline costs money, we can only slowly think of a way." said Dresedrese.
"The method we have thought of for now is to let everyone adopt trees." So Dresedrese launched a tree adoption activity on a crowdfunding platform "As long as there is willingness to adopt, 1200 yuan a year adopts one tree, we will hang the adopter's name on the tree, and then take good care of the forest." Dresedrese said that because they do not want to always hold out their palms for subsidies, "What we can do is plant trees, let us use tree planting to give back to donors." "Many people ask us why we insist so much on doing these things in the mountains, but I I do not know either, it is just a kind of mission." Dresedrese said firmly with a bit of shyness. For Sula, the most important thing is to protect the forest and protect the land, and not let illegal loggers and timber merchants come again to destroy the forest, "But for me, as a mother, a woman, I only know that I hope my children can return to this land, return to the tribe." Tree adoption planting crowdfunding activity