Fauna & Flora International (FFI) aims to ensure the full recovery of Dashtijum’s fruit and nut forests.
Tajikistan’s forests – home to snow leopards, wolves, bears and the wild ancestors of apples, pears, pomegranates and walnuts – are under severe threat. Extreme poverty is exacerbating the reliance on and overuse of natural resources: more than 50% of the country’s forests have been lost over the last 100 years. Fauna & Flora International (FFI) aims to ensure the full recovery of Dashtijum’s fruit and nut forests, thus supporting the well-being and resilience of forest communities.
Through this project, FFI worked with 500 people from five communities in southern Tajikistan (Khatlon province) to recover one of the country’s last remaining fruit and nut forest areas, Dashtijum. FFI empowered people to participate in and benefit from sustainable forest management and restoration, helping to generate income for their families from sustainably sourced forest products, and actively involving them in actions to protect the forest from over-grazing and promote its recovery through the planting of 150,000 trees from more than 30 native species.
