It was a busy and impactful green weekend at Wild Tomorrow Fund’s Greater Ukuwela Nature Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal South Africa, with over 500 native trees planted in just one day! A diverse team of people from across the country excitedly converged at Ukuwela, and together with our Green Mambas, rangers and staff, rolled up their sleeves and wielded shovels, working together to protect biodiversity by restoring this critically endangered forest. Read more in our latest blog post below.

*L’Occitane staff member plants her first tree at Ukuwela! Photo by Gareth Roberts.*

It was a fresh green start for a critically endangered forest, with the first saplings planted to launch the tree-planting phase of Wild Tomorrow Fund’s Sand Forest Restoration Project.

A group of 27 L’Occitane employees from across South Africa traveled to our Greater Ukuwela Nature Reserve and worked alongside our team of 14 Zulu community women (the ‘Green Mambas’), our rangers and staff, to plant trees while learning hands-on about wildlife conservation and forest restoration. Over 500 native trees were planted in a single day, marking a big start to the reforestation phase of the project which aims to plant 10,000 trees across the next two years.

This is no ordinary tree-planting project. South Africa’s Sand Forest is a unique and fragile forest that grows on the remnants of sand dunes left behind when the ocean receded eastward to the current coastline millions of years ago. It covers a smaller area than any other forest type, is extremely rare and as such, its protection is vitally important. Today, only 3,540 hectares of Sand Forest are estimated to remain, of which only 44% is protected. As a result, this forest habitat is critically endangered.

Wild Tomorrow Fund’s Greater Ukuwela Nature Reserve, officially declared as a protected area in June 2021, added an additional 10 hectares (25 acres) of Sand Forest under legal protection in South Africa. However, these remnant areas of sand forest have been damaged by prior cattle farming and the unmanaged take-over of invasive plants, meaning it requires active restoration.

*Volunteers were visited by a leopard tortoise, one of five tortoise and terrapin species at the reserve, one of which is vulnerable to extinction.*

“It is the most threatened forests globally that - by virtue of their disappearing habitat - are places of last refuge for many rare species. That’s why conserving and restoring the endangered Sand Forest is such an important project for the protection of threatened biodiversity in South Africa”, commented Wild Tomorrow Fund’s co-founder, Wendy Hapgood .

Wild Tomorrow Fund’s Sand Forest Restoration Project is truly an international team effort, bringing support from around the globe to this fragile forest in the north-eastern corner of South Africa. L’Occitane South Africa partnered locally with Wild Tomorrow Fund, awarding a grant to support the first year of the project, as part of the company’s “Respecting Biodiversity” initiative. Additional support came from Wild Tomorrow Fund’s supporters, who donated to plant a sand forest tree, from New York City, to Florida and Kentucky in the US, and internationally from Canada, Finland, Germany and beyond!

Leading up to the weekend of tree planting, the Green Mambas completed the first step in the restoration project, spending over 3 months removing the stubborn Coast Climbing Thorn, a tangled vine that chokes the floor of the forest. The vines wrap around the understory plants and must be cut to release their grip before being physically pulled out - a tug of war between this stubborn vine and the determined Green Mambas. Their work at Wild Tomorrow Fund’s reserve creates 14 new jobs in conservation for this team from the nearby rural Mduku community. The woman are proud to be Green Mambas, supporting their families while learning new skills in ecological restoration.

“My future is bright now because of Wild Tomorrow Fund. But before it was dark because after graduating high school in 2017 I wasn’t working” said Thobekile Dlamini, one of the Green Mambas. Unemployment in our rural municipality, Big 5 Hlabisa, runs as high 82% (data based on 2016 Community Survey). With such a shortage of jobs, and discouraged young people, every job is vitally important to support sustainable livelihoods and alleviate poverty.

Fellow Green Mamba, Senzeleni Ngcobo, added, “Before I came to work here, I had a big problem. But now I am working, everything is good. I have four kids. Now I can buy them clothes, I have transport money, I can feed them. So life is good now”.

Wild Tomorrow Fund hopes to apply lessons from the restoration effort to other areas of remaining, degraded sand forest across the region, a breath of hope for this very endangered forest.

Kevin Joliffe, Reserve Manager at Wild Tomorrow Fund South Africa said, “Thank you to everyone for their huge contribution towards our sand forest restoration project. It is very exciting and rewarding to see this critically endangered forest coming to life again.”

DONATE TO PLANT A SAND FORESt tree

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PLANTING BEGINS AT UKUWELA'S SAND FOREST