Connected Gardens: facilitating the peaceful co-existence of sloths and people.
The Connected Gardens project is a scalable, community-driven solution addressing the often-overlooked challenge of ‘micro-fragmentation’ in urban areas. This happens when breaks in canopy connectivity are caused by human infrastructure like buildings and roads. By reconnecting these canopy gaps and engaging landowners, we are creating vast networks of biological corridors that not only restore ecological balance but also empower local communities.
The global human population is projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, and by 2030, urban land cover is expected to expand by 1.2 million km2, nearly tripling the urban area from the year 2000. To protect wildlife, it is essential to create sustainable developments that allow species to move freely and safely across human-modified landscapes.
The aim of the Connected Gardens Project is to address the issues of habitat fragmentation and degradation: when once-continuous ecosystems are split up into smaller pieces and trees become increasingly isolated.
Our approach is simple yet powerful: arboreal species need continuous canopy cover to safely move between fragmented habitats. Through a community-driven model, we harness the collective power of private landowner decisions. We use a combination of targeted reforestation and wildlife bridge installations to ensure that every property in a given area maintains canopy connectivity with neighbouring properties.
The resulting network of ‘connected gardens’ provides a safe route of passage for arboreal species and increases overall habitat availability. Landowners benefit by attracting more wildlife to their land, which can boost ecotourism opportunities, while reforestation helps reduce erosion, improve air and water quality, and provide green spaces that improve mental health and combat climate change.
Every single property or garden has the potential to provide safe habitat and food for wild animals.
Community members become conservation partners, actively managing their land and contributing to the broader initiative. They receive training, serve as citizen scientists and are empowered to make informed decisions about the types of trees planted on their property, based on ecological benefits.
The cumulative impact of these actions across whole communities’ leads to increased habitat connectivity, greater wildlife abundance, and a significant reduction in human-wildlife conflict, demonstrating how individual efforts can drive large-scale environmental change.
Over the next 10 years, the 30 species of native trees that we have planted over an area of 30 km2 will absorb over 12,500 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every single year.
