IPC has completed design and initiated installation of a large-scale nursery project in Gabon’s Mondah National Forest for the National Parks of Gabon, Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (ANPN).
Mondah National forest lies twenty kilometers north of Gabon’s capital city, Libreville. Throughout the past two decades, the park has been experiencing increasing negative environmental impact from unplanned and unconstrained settlement along with unregulated resource extraction.
The purpose of the Mondah nursery is to propagate native Gabonese tree species and culturally significant edible, medicinal and otherwise useful plants. IPC is working in close collaboration with several of the local Gabonese ethnic groups to locate and collect propagation material while gaining a deeper understanding of ethnobotanical species.
The goals of the ANPN nursery are:
• Collect, propagation and planting of native and endemic and endemic species.
• Facilitate the establishment of forest succession patterns in degraded areas.
• Promote Gabonese and Central W. African plant species.
Long term goals include:
• Work with the local populace to facilitate forest recovery, preservation and regeneration.
• Promote native plants for integration into urban and peri-urban landscapes.
• Develop a diverse native and tropical food species propagation program based on agro-ecological principals to promote regional food security and the adoption of sustainable land management practices. .
The nursery is built from reused railroad rails from the first train system in the country and castaway hardwood logs salvaged from the timber trade. The nursery is solar powered and all of the water consumed in the facility is part of a closed loop pond network designed for water catchment, storage and recirculation.
All of the compost and fertilizers are developed onsite and based on locally available organic waste and renewable biomass.
Images coming soon.