Photo: Supplied by World Vision
Niger is a dry, landlocked country in the Sahel in northwest Africa, which - after decades of land clearing for crops - was a country struggling to reforest.
It was in 1981, as Australian agronomist Tony Rinaudo was dropping trees off to be planted, that he was struck by the despair of a mostly hopeless task - most planted trees were failing.
However, he saw thriving weed-like plants that were actually the tree known as the native Kaligo tree.
They were young stems growing from a previously cleared tree stump.
Tony realised that pruning competing 'suckers' off the stump - and letting one stem grow - would lead to the tree reestablishing itself quickly and strongly.
It required little - just a matter of pruning the stems away - and was easy to teach to local farmers.
The method called Farmer Managed Natural Revegetation has now been credited with adding some 200 million trees, over about 35 years Re-establishing millions of acres in Niger with trees has helped make soils more fertile and moist, and as a result, crop yields are up.
The method has spread to 25 countries in Africa.
Tony spoke to Kathryn on his recent visit to New Zealand with charity World Vision, to promote the documentary about his reforesting exploits Forest Maker.
