Hello Marvin and welcome to the Forum. I'm planning to go to your Island in a couple months. I will be traveling to many places in the southern Philippines, in search of land that I can convert to forest and plantation. How much land are you planting? Are you taking advantage of any government-sponsored programs to create more natural forest?
Edit. Now I see that is 1.7 hectares. Will it just be converted to Natural forest or will you put a small house there or a vacation property?
I suppose you have probably planted some pioneer species, some trees that produce nitrogen. Which ones did you plant and how fast are they growing?
Will you be using bananas as a nurse crop, so that young seedlings don't get burnt in the sun?
Was this degraded land that it was no longer economically viable for planting rice? I am specifically looking at badly eroded land, since I'd like to buy a fairly large piece and I don't want to take farmland out of production. My fiance is from Mindanao, but we don't want to live there. So we are checking out many different possibilities.
We visited a government run tree farm on Bohol, where there were many
Native trees available as transplants. They have a few people who are well trained in determining where those trees
should go, according to the soil and other factors where they will be planted. So I expect to hire one of those people, no matter where I end up. It's a race, and you have a 4 year head start on me. Let's create lots of space for the wild birds and other creatures. That starts out with reintroducing their natural food supply.