# Introducing Restoring Biodiversity Highways: Our First Foundation-Certified Project
> https://tree-nation.com/projects/inside-tree-nation/article/28835-introducing-restoring-biodiversity-highways-our-first

- **Author**: Tree-Nation
- **Published**: 2026-08-25T12:47:59.000000Z

Announcing our new project in Chile! Restoring Biodiversity Highways, and with it, a milestone for how we certify carbon impact. This is the first project in our portfolio that we've certified under Foundation, the newest of our two certification pathways.What is Foundation Certification?We operate two Tree-Nation certification pathways: Foundation and Mission. Both sit inside the same verification framework we use across our portfolio, but each was built to solve a different measurement problem.Most reforestation interventions can't be independently verified from space. A mixed, ecosystem-led planting, native species scattered across a recovering landscape, doesn't produce a clean enough signal for satellites to isolate and measure. That's a large part of why we built Mission Certification: for restoration systems where carbon impact has to be tracked through a combination of field data, monitoring reports, and long-term verification, because independent remote measurement alone isn't reliable there.Foundation Certification exists for the opposite case: structured, repeatable planting systems, like the windbreak rows in Restoring Biodiversity Highways, where the pattern is consistent enough that we can measure aboveground carbon directly from satellite imagery, independently of any figure the project itself reports.That's not a small distinction. It means the carbon claim isn't modeled or self-reported; it's measured by a third party looking down at the exact planting site.Here's what that looks like in practice. Using Planet, the satellite platform behind our Aboveground Carbon Density (3-month composite) dataset, our Environment Team measured our Punta Lacuy site on Chiloé Island at 1.09 MgC/ha as of July 2026, a change of just 0.003 MgC/ha over the prior three months, independent of any number we or the project supplied. As the planting period starts in June 2027, we will continue to analyze this data before the activities start. A reading that close to flat is exactly what we want to see on a pre-planting site: it confirms there's almost no existing vegetation to confuse with what our trees will add later. That's the kind of external, satellite-verified starting point Foundation Certification is built to produce at every site, and the same baseline we'll track forward, quarter after quarter, as these plots turn into forest.For more on how our Environment Team is establishing these baselines across the project's other lots, see Setting the Carbon Baseline for Our First Foundation Project in Chile.You can read more about how our Foundation and Mission certifications fit together in our certification standards.Why this project?The Restoring Biodiversity Highways project works across two contrasting Chilean landscapes: the dry Mediterranean zone of central Chile, spanning the Maule and O'Higgins regions, and the rainy temperate zone further south, on Chiloé Island in the Los Lagos region. Decades of intensive agriculture and cattle ranching have stripped much of this territory of its original vegetation, leaving degraded soils, eroded slopes, and fragmented habitat behind.The approach is straightforward: native species chosen for the local zone, structured for erosion control, wind protection, and habitat connection, planted with an eye toward linking isolated properties into something closer to a continuous corridor, turning them into “biodiversity highways”.The project is called “Restoring biodiversity highways” for a reason: our ambition isn't a single planted parcel, but a chain of them, each supporting wildlife movement and ecological recovery between properties that were previously cut off from each other. This first phase spans seven planting sites and roughly 2,850 native trees across close to 6 hectares of previously grazed land. In the dry Mediterranean zone, the mix leans on species like quillay, peumo, maitén, litre, and molle, chosen for erosion control, fertility enhancement, and fauna support. Further south on Chiloé Island, the rainy temperate zone calls for a different set: species like ulmo, tineo, notro, and coigüe de Chiloé, selected for land reclamation, water regulation, and habitat support.This is the kind of design we built Foundation Certification for. The planting pattern at each of these sites, and the windbreak-plus-forest-island model behind our wider project, is one we and the team on the ground can repeat across other degraded parcels in the region using the same species logic and the same measurement approach. Planting across all seven sites was originally scheduled for June to December 2026; that timeline has since shifted, and planting is now set to run from 1 June to 31 August 2027, with pits prepared and micro-catchments shaped ahead of time to capture and hold rainwater in zones where irrigation isn't an option. Built for precise carbon measurementThe monitoring plan applied across these sites is where that precision shows up in practice. The team on the ground will establish a precise GPS-mapped boundary and permanent photo-monitoring points at each site, capturing conditions before planting, during planting, and then every year for  at least ten years afterward. Survivorship will be tracked directly through semi-random forest inventory plots, 0.2 hectares each, with drone mapping to supplement ground data where useful. Monitoring is planned to continue through year twenty at each site.Aboveground carbon baseline reports are being established for each site by our TN team, anchoring the carbon accounting behind this certification. Given these parcels' shared history of cattle grazing and, in several cases, exposure to drought, the survival benchmark set across this planting is 67 percent, a target that reflects the real conditions of degraded land rather than an idealized one, and one the monitoring plan above is built to track honestly over time.What this means going forwardBeing the first project we've certified under Foundation isn't a statement about this project being better than others in our portfolio. It's a statement about fit: we designed Restoring Biodiversity Highways as a structured, standardized, scalable carbon system, and we built Foundation as the pathway to measure exactly that kind of work with precision.We'll continue monitoring the project annually as we expand planting across Maule, O'Higgins, and Los Lagos, combining field data, forest inventory plots, and remote sensing under the same verification framework we apply across our entire portfolio.