Update #27: Replanting and replacing trees / May 25, 2025

The spring season in Lurë continued with maintenance activities, including replacing some of the dead trees planted in autumn 2023. A group of 11 workers (women, men and youth from the surrounding villages) joined us for a full day of working.

Busy spring season

At the beginning of April, our team traveled to Lurë to continue with the spring activities planned for this year. This time, we were joined by two new team members - Eleonora and Ernest - who responded to the open call we launched at the beginning of this year. We’re happy to welcome some new faces and involve more young people in our reforestation efforts. The Tree nursery remains an excellent hub for youth engagement and inclusion.

We arrived in Lurë the day before, so we could start the day early. Imer (our local coordinator) had already organized everything with the workers, and we were ready to begin replanting the area reforested in 2023.

Why replanting?

If you’ve read our monitoring report in Update #21, you might already know why we’re doing this, but here’s a quick explanation.

Compared to the areas reforested in the previous years, the 2023 area showed the lowest survival rate, only 56.49%. While we can’t say for sure why we have such a low survival rate in this area, we could identify some issues which contributed to this result, for example:

• Prolonged drought and an unusually arid summer;
• East facing orientation, resulting in full-day sun exposure;
• Water diversion caused by a nearby hydropower;
• Steep, rocky terrain;
• Competition among multiple saplings in a single planting hole;
• and, to our (sad) surprise, some instances of careless or malicious behavior by a few workers.

The only logical response was to replant the most affected areas, improve tree distribution, and aim for a more balanced, natural-looking forest in the future.

We already had some plastic-bag-grown trees in the Tree nursery, which we purchased last year from a commercial nursery in Burrel. We had already planted the trees we grew ourselves during the 2023 - 2024 cycle. Still, these trees from the commercial nursery needed attention. Many bags had multiple seedlings growing too closely together. After consulting with our forestry experts, we decided the best approach was to thin the batches by cutting all but one or two of the healthiest trees, leaving the strongest root systems intact and reducing competition for water and nutrients.

How did it go?

Honestly, better than we expected!

We managed to replant 1,200 trees in one day with 11 workers, Imer and our five team members. The day started early with the team hand-picking tree bags and trimming saplings. Then we loaded up everything (and everyone) and drove up to the planting area. Our beloved Kësulkuqe (the Mitsubishi L200) was up for the challenge, however, we noticed that the road from the village had deteriorated significantly due to heavy March rains.

Planting itself is always a highlight. After warm hellos and hugs (we hadn’t seen most of the workers since the autumn planting!), everyone got straight to work. Each worker received a batch of trees to plant and carried them up into the steep terrain.

As we were nearly finished, we were blessed by some rain, which was great for the trees and for the mood. It’s easy to see when people love what they’re doing: they keep planting, despite the weather.

Afterwards, we paid everyone and drove back down to the village. We’re really looking forward to the next monitoring round to see how much this replanting effort improves the survival rate in the 2023 plot.

What’s next?

We have found the perfect spot for the new Tree nursery in the Korçë region! We’ll share a full update as soon as the greenhouse is built, but for now, we can tell you this:

The new nursery will be located in Voskopojë, surrounded by pine trees and a field of calendula flowers. If that’s not the dreamiest combo for a Tree Nursery, we don’t know what is…

On behalf of the whole team,
Pavel