News published: 15 September 2023

At Lukango Tree Conservancy we conserve tree and shrub species that are native to tropical Africa, with focus on threatened species. We have a seed bank, including freezer capacity, a dedicated nursery, and a young species-rich forest of future mother trees.

In March 2023 we launched our first tree growing school program in Uganda. Unlike most school tree planting programs, our own trees school initiative (OOTSI) is 3-years long and requires the establishment of conservation clubs, whose members, with training, plant and grow threatened native tree species, while concurrently competing to establish a winner at implementing their newly acquired skills. To participate, the school must have more than enough land and water to accommodate the project. Additionally, they must commit, in a memorandum of understanding, to recruiting and maintaining a club membership of at least 20 students for the 3 year duration and appoint a teacher patron for the club. OOTSI is currently being piloted in 10 schools and will be extended to an increasing number of schools twice a year.

We envision a future of district wide competitions and ultimately, competition amongst districts, and perhaps even on a national level. We donated 12 copies of each of these 4 globally threatened (IUCN): Khaya anthotheca, K. grandifoliola, Prunus africana, Afzelia africana and 1 nationally threatened species: Warburgia ugandensis, to each of the 10 schools, and therefore deployed 600 trees in total. Club patrons received classroom and hands on field training on how to plant and care for the trees.

During LuTreeCo’s first physical check in on the schools, 65-70% of the Khaya spp., P. africana and W. ugandensis were still alive, after 4 months; however, only 32% of A. africana had survived. Across the 10 schools, tree survival (%) ranged from as low as 27% to 87%, with only 4 schools keeping more than 80% of the trees alive. These most successful schools had assigned trees to individual students from the very beginning of the project, and it is these students that led the site tour of their trees during the site visit. Schools that were not as successful tended to have students that were not well informed about purpose of the project and had somewhat detached patrons.

As we expand OOTSI in to more schools, we will (1) increase the number of trees donated from 12 to 15 per species; (2) require that all participating schools assign trees to specific club members, and rather than train the club patrons only at a centralized location for all schools, LuTreeCo will visit each school and train both the patrons and assigned students. Furthermore, both the patrons and students will be accountable for the periodic updates on the planted trees.