Meet the man who has planted over 1M trees in 30 years

He's known as the Father of Trees. He's a Franciscan missionary and believes in practising what he preaches. His roots are in Germany but he has been planting trees in Kenya for the past three decades. These trees, in the Subukia Valley in the mid-western Nakuru county, are now fully grown and have helped not only in reviving local precipitation and natural water channels but have also stopped the migration of the locals.

Meet Hermann Borg, the founder of Mother Earth Network, a group that is aiming to strengthen environmental conservation issues in Kenya by creating awareness, capacity building, and conservation through tree planting.

I have invested just $50,000 in planting one million saplings in the past 30 years. These trees are now worth more than $5 million, Borg told a visiting IANS correspondent.

He was honoured by the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) at the inauguration of its five-day 28th International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB 2017) for forest conservation and community empowerment in Kenya.

Recounting his achievements that started by involving local communities in 1983 in Subukia, which was once a barren rocky land with no tree cover, the missionary said,

Now I can say proudly that after 30 years of planting trees, the situation is different. The hills are green again with trees growing bigger and taller. Natural water channels are back as precipitation has spiked—almost doubled. So is the noticeable increase in groundwater.

According to him, there is sufficient fodder for the livestock. Crop production has revived. Annual precipitation in the area has doubled to over 500 mm from the earlier 250 mm.

And this happens only by involving the local communities, who were encouraged to mitigate climate change impacts by planting trees, he added.

Borg, who is known by his nickname 'Baba Miti' in the local dialect, meaning 'Father of Trees', said that when he came to Subukia there was no school and locals were migrating to other areas owing to the barren land.

Now the migration is almost negligible. Now Subukia has a secondary school too. In fact, those people who migrated earlier have now come back and they are prosperous owing to the good crop yield. Locals are earning from timber, he said.

Still, the locals are planting 30,000 saplings every year around schools and in slum areas.

The sapling survival rate is more than 90 percent. The only reason for such a high survival rate is that the locals themselves are nurturing each and every sapling they are planting, he said.

A jovial Borg believes climate change is the real threat globally and efforts are needed to mitigate and adapt to its effects. His Mother Earth Network has plans to expand tree planting and conservation initiatives to the neighbouring countries of Uganda and Tanzania.

With inputs from IANS.

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