Mongolia has lost 30% of its forest in fifty years. Every Rara Avis guest plants twenty trees. Here is what that actually means.
Nomin G.
In 2021 the President of Mongolia announced the Billion Trees national campaign. By 2030: one billion trees planted, a 30% reduction in desertification, and a measurable return of forest cover lost to mining, over-grazing, and climate shift.
Rara Avis runs a private grove at Big Sky Lodge in Terelj National Park. Twenty Siberian larch saplings are planted for every guest who completes a trip with us. Your certificate, with GPS coordinates of your specific trees, is sent to you when you arrive home.
Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) is the native forest tree of the Khentii. Drought-tolerant once established. Sheds needles in winter, reducing snow load on branches. Lives 400-500 years when left alone. Captures roughly 22kg of COâ‚‚ annually per mature tree.
A rotating crew of local herders and students from the Mongolian University of Life Sciences forestry programme. Planting happens in May — the soil has thawed but snowmelt still provides moisture. Survival rate at year three: 78% in our grove versus 45% national average. We water them for the first two seasons.
Mongolia lost an estimated 30% of its forest cover between 1970 and 2020. Drought, fire, illegal logging, and shifting livestock patterns. The Billion Trees campaign is not going to fix all of this. But it is the right direction, and we are on it.
We geo-tag every sapling. On your anniversary year, we send an update. You can come back and see them — they will be knee-high by year three, waist-high by year five.