A REFORESTATION GAME FOR UNIVERSEUM

Project background

Every year forests three times the size of Denmark are chopped down. The most difficult forest to regrow is the rainforest. Is it too late to change path? Can we change direction from deforestation to reforestation, and if so - how?

It’s not easy to replant a rainforest. The rainforest consist of a complex network of animals and plants that are dependent of each other. When there are no plants the animals have nowhere to live and when there are no animals the trees can’t spread their seeds. They both have to be in place at the same time, and this makes reforestation very hard. The best way for a biodiverse rainforest to grow is organically, by itself.

In many places conservationists tries to save the rainforests by planting tree corridors to give small islands of rainforest new life. When the forests are chopped down there are often patches that are left intact for different reasons, because of conservation laws or difficult terrain for example. These small forests are too tiny for many vital animal species to survive, but by planting trees between this little forest and a larger one animals can travel freely to find food and maybe a mate.

This way the forest regain its vitality and can expand organically. The rainforest corridor must not contain all the plants that the animals need to survive, it’s merely a natural passage for the animals to travel.