What's Next For The Tree Bank

This is a message I don’t relish having to write. After nearly 20 years, we find ourselves in a position where we need to sunset our Tree Bank projects in both Hispaniola and in Panama. This is not a decision, I, our other senior staff, or our Board of Directors has taken lightly. In this email I hope to walk you through why we came to this decision and how this impacts our work more broadly.

First, I want to offer an assurance that every penny donated to Earth Sangha for the Tree Bank will be spent on our programs there. I know a number of our donors have been very generous contributors to our international efforts over the years, and I want to thank you all for your generosity and ensure that those donations are put to good use.

In a certain sense, we are victims of our own success. At the Tree Bank Hispaniola, in the Dominican Republic, we have entered over 350 acres of forest into conservation easements, we built an agroforestry tree nursery from scratch and supplied over 200,000 free trees to the community, we have invested substantially in infrastructure and materials for the community including a truck, a tri-motor, a community center, and numerous repairs and upgrades to plumbing and water supply to Los Cerezos. Coffee and cacao were once scarce, if valuable, crops in our project area. Farmers were interested but needed capital and material support to get started. Now many farmers there are engaged in growing these valuable forest-compatible crops, grown at our nursery that will continue to operate. All of those components are durable investments that we are entrusting to the community there – everything we have invested will stay in the community continuing to serve them and their conservation efforts.

Working with our colleagues Cosme, Manolo, and Yinabel we have already begun our transition to hand over elements of the project to the association and make big final pushes on various projects. For example, we are focusing on planting native trees from the Tree Bank Nursery to conservation sites and farms before the end of this year. Many of the projects, including our Forest Credit program, operate without much outside assistance, except the oversight we provide, and can continue to operate for years to come through our partner organization: the Asociación de Productores de Bosque Los Cerezos. Since we are limited geographically, we have largely captured most of the land available for conservation easements in this program, leaving a stable program in place.

At the Tree Bank Panama, we have completed our initial goal: the construction of the “casa de vigilancia” and surrounding trails. This program has successfully reduced the poaching of valuable wildlife and gives our partner organization, the Organización de Medicina Tradicional Naso, a strong foundation to explore eco-tourism opportunities as an additional revenue source to support the conservation of tropical forests.  

While we are proud of what we have achieved, we also realized we reached a crossroads where we would need very substantial investment to continue to grow the program. Unfortunately, this is an area where we are just not equipped to expand.

With Chris, my father and Earth Sangha co-founder, reducing his role substantially in his quasi-retirement, we also have a gap in our ability to administer the Tree Bank sustainably. So much of the Tree Bank’s success rests with Chris’ daily phone calls and personal relationships with our partners and visits to the sites over the years. Chris’ health unfortunately no longer allows him to travel, and without him, the Sangha would likely need to create a new full-time position to support the Tree Bank projects – something we just aren’t in the position to do given our financial picture and the expense and complexity of our nursery relocation and expansion project. (As Chris’ health decline has made it hard for him to travel, it’s been similarly difficult for other Earth Sangha staff members to travel to either project area. Unfortunately, it’s likely that I, as a trans woman, can no longer travel there safely.)

While our primary reasons for wrapping up our international projects are not fiscal, budgetary aspects did play a role. As we embark in what is the Sangha’s largest, most complex, project ever in our nursery relocation and expansion, we also find ourselves in uncertain times fiscally and politically. In a typical year, Tree Bank donations only account for a small portion of total Tree Bank expenditures, the rest of the funding coming from undesignated funds and donations. In some years, the gap can be to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

With the broader picture that continuing our Tree Bank project would be logistically challenging, would require substantial investment in staff both here and in-country, and would be a capital-intensive project for which we don’t have clear funding streams, all at a time when we need to be focused on expanding on DC area plant conservation program, I, our leadership team, and our Board of Directors made the decision to sunset the program.

Personally for me, this has been an incredibly difficult decision. I first went to the Dominican Republic as a teenager still in high school. I spent weeks at a stretch in our project area, first with our initial Tree Bank Director, Gaspar, and after his passing, with Cosme, Manolo, and Gaspar’s daughter Yinabel as our primary colleagues. I watched the community change over the years – becoming greener and more verdant, but also more developed. On my very first trip we used gas lamps at night, many families cooked primarily with wood-burning clay stoves, and many had dirt floors in their houses. Now most houses are built at least partially with concrete, electricity is the norm, and I don’t think I’ve even seen a gas lamp in use for years. I watched kids grow up to become young adults – some even participating in the program, many becoming parents like me too. With so many personal connections it’s been an agonizing decision to make. But as Executive Director, I take seriously my duties and responsibilities to Earth Sangha and the broader community we serve. I know this is the right choice for our organization to grow and to continue to protect native plants and their habitat, and connect them with people and communities who want to steward them.I know that folks reading this will have more questions. Please keep an eye out for future emails where you can hear from both Chris and I on our perspectives on the Tree Bank and its legacies.

Thank you,

Maddie

Madeline Bright

Executive Director

Earth Sangha

mbright@earthsangha.org