Autumn 2016 marks the 80th birthday of Trees, the journal of International Tree Foundation, known as The Men of the Trees in the past. This makes Trees one of the oldest environmental publications still going strong today. In fact we have just published the 73rd Volume of the journal.

Co-founder and CEO, Makala Jasper, was singled out from more than 130 other applicants to receive an international conservation award from the Whitley Fund for Nature.

Programme Manager, Emmanuel Banda, said these challenging conditions only served to underline the importance of the NBNW project – because farmers were being trained to use agroforestry and a selection of tried and tested crops to achieve greater drought resilience.

The Kenya launch of the 20 Million Trees for Kenya’s Forests Campaign was marked by spirit of celebration last week, with singing, dancing, poetry recitals – and the symbolic planting of the first 100 trees.

ITF’s 20 Million Trees campaign will play a vital role in helping to reverse deforestation and meet international commitments for sustainable development, Kenya’s ambassador to the UK, Mr Lazarus Amayo said last week.

The initiative will target degraded areas in all five of Kenya’s ‘Water Towers’, upland forests which are the source of all Kenya’s rivers and water supplies.

Last month ITF Vice Chair Prof Roger Leakey argued that ‘We cannot save Forests without Agroforestry’. The importance and potential of agroforestry were very clear when I recently visited Burkina Faso.