Asia restoration saplings die within five years

Nearly half of the trees planted in tropical forest restoration programmes in Asia do not survive for more than five years, research has revealed.

Experts analysed data from 176 restoration sites and found that 18 per cent of saplings died within the first year of being planted, while after five years the figure was 44 per cent.

But the research, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological, also found survival varied between sites and species – at some more than 80 per cent of trees were alive after five years but at other sites almost all had died.