 My role in the FCC project is to lead participatory research, particularly looking at local knowledge about trees and agroforestry practices and to look at what is driving land use and land cover change both inside and outside the Virunga National Park. We're conducting field research and we're working with our local partner, which is WWF, the implementing partner. So WWF are looking at promoting energy woodlots around the park to reduce the pressure and we're working with them and with their partner associations, so tree planting associations, in trying to understand what species and what agroforestry options we could design to improve the delivery of ecosystem services. What we're hoping to achieve is to design agroforestry options that are suited to different field and farmers conditions to try to diversify both the types of species that are planted and for different purposes and to train technical agents of different staff in these different practices. Well outside the Virunga National Park there's very few forests that are left, so most of the forests are actually found in the protected areas. They're under severe pressure both for timber extraction, for charcoal extraction. There's also encroachment in the park for agricultural or pastoral purposes. Now outside the park we're addressing issues of soil fertility and erosion problems that are occurring on agricultural land and trying also to increase tree products both for nutrition or medicinal purposes or for home consumption or income. The Virunga National Park is, apart from being one of the oldest parks in Africa, with a very high level of endemism and very high concentration of mammal species and different forest ecosystem which are very important for global conservation. It's also an interesting park because it is located on the border with Rwanda and Uganda and it has been at the heart of you know several decades of political military conflict and which have meant that it's been very difficult to to protect the park. The Virunga National Park has an iconic species which is the mountain gorilla which is you know so it's receiving a lot of international attention for the protection of that endangered species. Ekrafis is providing technical backstopping to the project to help select or design tree selection and tree management tools so that implementation partners can actually diversify and match species to different farmers' needs and farm conditions because we're in an area with the high altitudinal gradient so very different agroecological zones within the same area so it's important to to select species that would match both the agroecological conditions but also the needs of farmers which can be different both in terms of gender differences or ethnic differences farm sizes. What one of the major challenge around the Virunga Park is that and one of the major driver of land use change has been the expansion of eucalyptus plantations for the production of both timber, firewood and charcoal so that's what most of the reforestation programs have focused on what we're trying to see is how we could address other other needs such as nutritional needs with with the promotion of fruit trees or medicinal trees and trying to to broaden the list of species and and not focus on a few exotic but but rather include also some of the native and endangered species that used to occur in the area. The approach that we're using is to integrate local and scientific knowledge about different tree options so that's that's why we've conducted two local knowledge studies looking at what farmers know what is growing in their fields what they know about it both in terms of their uses but also in terms of their management and and combine that so that's our goal to combine that with available scientific information with lessons learned from from neighboring countries where where there has been several interventions like Rwanda or Uganda with similar agroecological zones and and to to design these options these different options so that's that's how we go about it integrating local knowledge validating it with stakeholders and integrating it with scientific knowledge. So we've had a lot of of interviews conducted in the field we've also had focus group discussions and more recently we've we've prepared two participatory workshops or technical workshops where we've fed back the results of our local knowledge studies to local stakeholders so who are these stakeholders both the technical staff of WWF who are leading reforestation projects but also other environmental association other farmer associations local scientists extension staff the rule advisory staff so we've conducted these these workshops where we've tried to to look at the different agroforestry options and what were their you know what were their opportunities what were their constraints associated with them and and what were the solutions to these constraints and so what really stood out from these workshop was that eight people really increased their understanding of agroforestry as as a as being a diver you know offering diverse options opportunities for tree planting and you know outsides you know wood lots of monoculture also not focusing on just a few so-called agroforestry species like fast-growing leguminous shrubs but really thinking about how we can improve tree diversity and recover on on farm with different options that would be different according to to the different needs so you would look at improving fruit trees for example in homesteads but looking at erosion control on slopes and and also natural regeneration looking at different options so what's really stood out was people's perception of agroforestry really changed in the opportunities that it can provide for farmers. Sure there are clear differences so some of the tree products or uses such as timber or or beekeeping or male dominated sectors let's put it this way women on the other hand are more interested in in fruit trees but not just in planting the fruit trees but actually in adding value to these fruits by transforming it and and marketing it so that was another difference women are also more interested in the supply of a firewood as well which which is their main concern and also on improving soil fertility in their fields although they they have no knowledge gaps when you compare to to men in terms of their knowledge of different options that you could have for improving soil fertility. This year we've really concentrated on on collecting on collating local knowledge and understanding we validated as I've just said about with the with the participatory workshops now the goal is to is to analyze this this information and to combine it with what we know of agroforestry practices in the region and to design tree selection and management tools that are customized to to both the Lubeiro and Massisi district and and from which we can we can help partner organizations to to plant trees.