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Focus On: Central Asia’s fruit and nut forests
Central Asia holds an amazing array of ecosystems but one of the most fascinating is the ancient forests of fruit and nut trees. They are not only diverse habitats full of wildlife but they support local communities.
FFI works with in-country partners in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to promote the sustainable use and more effective protection of forest resources. We are helping government authorities, NGOs and local communities to work together to manage their valuable forests.
Learn more about our work to save fruit and nut forests.
Central Asia’s forests contain wild walnut, apple, plum, pistachio, cherry, hawthorn and almond
Many of the tree varieties are ancestors to our domestic varieties
About 90 percent of this habitat has been lost in the last 50 years
Local people rely on the forests for survival – for example, in a good harvest year walnuts can account for 50% of a family’s annual cash income in Kara Alma village in Kyrgyzstan
Threats: over-harvesting of fruits, extraction of firewood and timber, restricted regeneration due to uncontrolled grazing
Last year FFI’s Global Trees Campaign published a IUCN Red List of Trees of Central Asia
Read news on our fruit and nut programme:
Saving Kyrgyzstan’s forests - 11/02/2010
FFI’s in-country partner helps local people to protect their threatened walnut forests.
IYB Issue: Food securityIt’s one of the most obvious ways that humans rely on nature for survival – we need to eat. Though we shouldn’t just look at the utility value of biodiversity, it is certainly one of the most compelling reasons to protect the variety of life on Earth. Wild varieties of crops, such as the apples, walnuts and other species in Central Asia, hold critical diversity that has been lost in much of modern large-scale agriculture. They may well hold genes that benefit food production in the future, for example, resistance to new pests or the ability to adapt to climate change. |
“FFI has played a very important role in capacity building. It’s priceless for local people and forestry officials to get something like training or equipment.”
- Jarkyn Samanchina, FFI’s Kyrgyzstan in-country representative
Learn more about our work to save fruit and nut forests.
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Photo credits: Chris Loades / FFI, Jason Smith, Jarkyn Samanchina / FFI
We know that the scale of global biodiversity loss can make you feel helpless sometimes, but here are five things you can do to protect the variety of life.
FFI will be highlighting a different species or habitat every month in our new Focus on section. Discover more about May's Focus on - the pygmy hippo
The UN has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. It’s an opportunity to reflect on our achievements to safeguard biodiversity and focus on the urgency of our challenge for the future.
