Join our Forest Twinning project by twinning your land, school, village, local woodland or sports club with the purchase and protection of threatened rainforests in Ecuador, Chile and Costa Rica.
By twinning land with tropical forest, you will help us preserve rare natural habitats, and the animals, plants and indigenous communities that depend on them for survival.
How it works
Landowners, including schools, businesses and other organisations are invited to measure their land and twin its acreage (or part acreage) with the equivalent number of hectares of tropical forest.
You don’t need to own land yourself as you could twin your village, local woodland, or favourite wild place with a donation to Rainforest Concern to purchase and protect tropical forests and biodiversity.
Every acre of land you twin will protect approximately 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of threatened tropical forest habitat.
Forest Twinning Projects
Working alongside local communities, our current Forest Twinning projects include:
- Ecuador
Help us expand our 2,900 hectare Neblina Cloud Forest Reserve in Ecuador, in the Tropical Andes biodiversity hotspot – the most biodiverse of all hotspots in the world, with the largest variety of amphibian, bird and mammal species.
Forest Twinning donations will allow us to expand the reserve and contribute to the expansion of the wider Choco-Andean Biodiversity Corridor, which extends from Ecuador into Southwest Colombia, creating vital ecological corridors and linking the Neblina Reserve to other protected forests in the region.
A contribution from each twinned hectare will help to fund educational field trips for local Ecuadorian schoolchildren, many of whom have never ventured into a cloud forest before. Our team arranges transport, meals and guided trips into the Reserve to share the wonders of the rainforest, giving children a greater understanding of the importance of protecting this rare cloud forest habitat for future generations.
- Costa Rica
We have an exciting opportunity to purchase up to 1,000 hectares of rainforest to connect Costa Rica’s highest mountains with the Caribbean lowland forest, linking fragmented forests to enable threatened wildlife to migrate safely between protected areas.
Costa Rica is among the top 20 countries in the world for biodiversity and the Bosque de las Madres Ecological Corridor will provide the missing link to connect ecosystems across all of Costa Rica’s altitudes, including the La Amistad Binational Park, declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1982.
The corridor will preserve biodiversity and expand altitudinal roaming space for jaguars, puma, ocelots, jaguarondis and margays and other threatened species including the neotropical otter, Baird’s tapir, red-fronted parrotlet, great curassow and great green macaw, as well as endangered plant species such as the cigar boxwood (Cedrela odorata) and the large-leaved mahogany (Swetenia humilis).
- Chile
We have the opportunity to purchase 1,200 hectares of rare araucaria or ‘monkey puzzle’ tree forest in southern Chile to nearly double the size of Rainforest Concern’s 1,600 hectare Nasampulli Reserve.
Thought to have evolved 200 million years ago, araucaria forests are an ancient relict species where dinosaurs would have once roamed. Native only to a small region in Argentina and Chile, araucaria are listed as ‘Endangered’ by the IUCN Red List and only 200,000 hectares of this rare habitat remain on the planet.
Nasampulli is home to the southern pudu, the second smallest deer in the world; the tiny monito del monte (known as the monkey of the mountains); guiña, puma and the Magallenic woodpecker, one of the largest in the world.
Education – UK
We have created a series of education resources for schools to download from the Rainforest Concern website and aim to create an interactive rainforest experience for UK schoolchildren, subject to further funding.
Bath woodland twinned with Ecuadorian cloud forest
One of our first Forest Twinning projects was the 12 acre Sirius Wood in Bath, which landowner Peter Hawkins, CEO of Renewal Associates, twinned with 12 hectares of cloud forest in Ecuador. This enabled us to purchase land adjacent to the Neblina Cloud Forest Reserve to create protected ecological corridors for spectacled bears and other rare and endangered species.
Peter Hawkins said: “We are delighted to twin our British woodland with globally important tropical rainforest. It’s exciting to see forest being bought and maintained by the local community as a result of our donation and to know that so many endangered rare plants and animals will now be protected for generations to come. We hope this pioneer project will lead to many other British woodlands being twinned with precious rainforest habitat.”
Twinning Surrey woodland with land to expand the Neblina Reserve
You don’t need to own land to take part in Forest Twinning.
Wokingham resident Tony Elliott twinned 12 acres of his favourite woodland in Wokingham, Surrey, with 12 hectares of rainforest in the Tropical Andes, which enabled Rainforest Concern to purchase land to expand the Neblina Cloud Forest Reserve.
To discuss twinning your land or for further information about Rainforest Concern, please contact us at [email protected].