Main Project
The main purpose of the society is the protection of forests
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best moment is now.“
Algeria has a remaining area of 2% of its total area today, which is about 2.4 million km². This indicates that the biggest nation of Africa is without vegetation.
Consequences of this are the erosion of soil and ongoing desertification, which means that the desert is spreading further on previously arable land or forests.
The Non-Profit organization “Desert Tree” started a project to combat this process by (re-)planting local forests. With permission from the forest authorities we were able to plant hundreds of tress over the last ten years.
Most of these trees are indigenous to not disturb the sensitive ecosystem or introduce neophytes. Despite being adapted to this environment these trees still need help to survive, especially during the hottest time of the year.
All this, i.e. trees and watering and grooming of them is paid by the plants sold in Switzerland.
Our idea or trade off is simple: Each sold plant in Switzerland corresponds to a tree that will be planted in Algeria (or in some of the follow-up regions) and the implicit deal thus is that you’re responsible for the plant in your house while we look out for “your”/”our” tree in the big world. This means that the environment will profit twice, once by you learning about nature and the environment and also by improving the local climate at the locations where we plant the trees.
Since we are a NGO, we are investing the full profit of the plant sale again into the project in Algeria or for some special events into these. Our yearly reports are also published on this site.
On the left you can take a peek at a small part of our ever growing forest in Algeria. The hard working person is the founder of the society, in the midst of planting a tree in the year of 2013.
For questions or any other concern you may contact us with the information you find at the contact site “contact”.
For an overview of where we have been active, you can check out the map, so that if you ever happen to be at any of the locations you can visit them first hand.