The Bicknell’s thrush, a small, brown songbird, faces dual environmental threats: In its summer home among New England’s tallest peaks, such as Vermont’s Mount Mansfield, climate change is altering the landscape, and could push out the scrubby vegetation it favors for nesting. 

In the winter, the thrush takes flight, traveling more than 1,500 miles to Hispaniola, the Caribbean island home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Particularly in Haiti, a history of colonization has contributed to sprawling deforestation, leaving only a fraction of the country covered in forest. 

Now, members of a group co-founded by Vermont biologist Julia Pupko and Haitian organizer Jean-Fenel Dorvilier are attempting to mend the wounds of deforestation, both for the sake of wildlife like the Bicknell’s thrush, and for Haitian residents who need forests to sustain their communities. The group is based in Duchity, a rural municipality in southwestern Haiti.

The organization, called Society for the Reforestation of Duchity, Haiti, was founded in 2020 and has filled a gap left by Vermont Haiti Project, a nonprofit organization that began providing humanitarian services in rural Haiti in 2007. The Vermont Haiti Project provided mentorship to the new organization before it disbanded in December 2023. 

Before it was colonized by the Spanish in the late 1400s, the island of Hispaniola was largely covered in forest, Pupko said. France colonized the western part of the island in the 1600s, now known as Haiti. Enslaved people in Haiti rebelled against the French, winning independence in 1804 — but the United States, France and others stifled the country’s development, and France required Haiti to pay it reparations, they noted. All the while, forest cover decreased.

”A lot was accomplished by cutting down valuable timber trees such as mahogany species, and also exporting things like indigo and sugar and other cash crops, which you also typically will deforest to do,” Pupko said. 

Participants in the Society for the Reforestation of Duchity, Haiti’s Arbor Day event plant a tree on May 1, 2024. Photo courtesy of Julia Pupko

The United States later occupied Haiti from 1915 until 1934, and during that time, forest cover dropped from 60% to around 20% as the U.S. converted land for agricultural use, Pupko said. Political turmoil within the country more recently has contributed to change on the landscape, too, they said.

As a child, Dorvilier’s birthday fell on Haiti’s Arbor Day, so he’d spend the day planting trees, an act that fostered his appreciation for forests. He volunteered with the Vermont Haiti Project, bringing volunteers into the mountains to place seedlings into the earth. 

That’s where he met Pupko, who got involved with the Vermont Haiti Project as a student at University of Vermont. Pupko currently works as a forestry specialist with the Vermont Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation, a post that is unrelated to their involvement with the organization. 

Though Pupko and Dorvilier spoke different languages at the time, they came to know each other through their shared interest in forests. 

“We kind of just spent a lot of time together, sharing words for trees, sharing words for different things, and really understood that both of us had a deep love for trees,” Pupko said. “We stayed in touch over the years and began developing a stronger friendship over that time, continuing to circle back to our shared love of forests and trees and reforestation, which culminated in 2020 in our decision to form a reforestation and agroforestry organization together.”

The Duchity reforestation project’s mission is distinct from that of the Vermont Haiti Project. The latter was primarily focused on public health, with projects that ranged from starting a medical clinic, improving access to clean water and providing disaster relief after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti.  

The new organization is focused on regrowing forest and improving the environment in Duchity. Its largest project takes place on Arbor Day, when members work with local schools and community members to plant trees. They host workshops on different topics, showing how to harvest large tree branches to use for construction, for example, without cutting the entire tree. Last May, 100 participants planted more than 1,000 trees during the event. 

Its efforts could help wildlife like the Bicknell’s thrush. While the bird is not listed as federally threatened or endangered, Partners in Flight, a group that tracks bird populations, ranks the species on its Red Watch list, its highest level of concern. 

Pupko pointed to literature showing evidence that the bird uses regenerating forests and agroforestry plots in the locations where it spends its winter. 

One of the Society for the Reforestation of Duchity, Haiti’s community forests. Photo courtesy of Julia Pupko

But the reforestation group’s goals, Pupko said, are centered around the community as much as the environment. It manages 36 acres of forest in two locations, which serve as an educational space and a resource for community members who can harvest products from them. If someone needs lumber to build a home, the organization’s staff — most of whom are from the community or live in Haiti — will work with them to sustainably harvest trees, Pupko said. In exchange, those who take from the forest are asked to help maintain it. 

“Our projects come from a number of agronomists and agroforesters that are from Duchity or surrounding (areas),” Pupko said. “When we’re working on projects, they talk to the elders in the community. They talk to the youth in the community. They have these big meetings that all different stakeholders are coming to and are bringing up different issues they want to address.”

Those, then, are incorporated into their plans, Pupko said. 

The organization operates by “emphasizing meeting the needs of the community in the work that we do as our primary objective, so that’s ensuring people have the tools and materials to be implementing these projects,” they said. But that mission “cannot be separated from the importance of overall ecosystem health and conservation.”

The two issues are inseparable, Pupko said, for many reasons: Large tracts of forest prevent mudslides after severe rains and hurricanes; the immediate environment is healthier for people and wildlife; an improved ecosystem can help clean water and improve agriculture. 

One of the organization’s projects involves eight farmers who work with the reforestation group to implement or support sustainable farming practices. 

“A lot of times, that’s providing seedlings,” Pupko said. “It may also be providing tools. Some farmers, they may know exactly what agroforestry strategy they want to implement and exactly how to care for the trees. But for other people, they may not know. So then in that case, we would provide them with the educational resources that they would need in order to successfully do this.”

Farmers and other community members approve of the organization, Dorvilier said in an interview, which made him understand that “this is something we can continue doing.”

Participants in the Society for the Reforestation of Duchity, Haiti’s Arbor Day event on May 1, 2024. Photo courtesy of Julia Pupko

“Now, we have about 35 people working with us in the community,” he said. 

Dorvilier’s concerns about forests run deep. Without them, animals disappear and agriculture becomes harder, he said. 

“Without trees, I think there is no life,” he said. 

That sentiment could apply to a bird Vermont conservationists have been concerned about for years. But efforts to protect the Bicknell’s thrush’s habitat in Vermont and New England only go so far, Pupko said. 

“If you ignore where they spend half of their year, their overwintering habitat, there’s no way that the species can continue to thrive,” they said.

“There’s many different creatures that migrate as winter falls here,” Pupko said. “The deep connection that is formed through sharing these miraculous species is really special and something that I think is worth supporting.”