Ulaanbaatar is the Capital and the largest city of Mongolia. Its population is over 1.3 million and is home to about 45% of the total population. From 2008 Ulaanbaatar's position rapidly rose in the investment world. Miners and bankers flocked to the city as construction and other sectors are booming. The Hummer is a famous and expensive car for the real rich in this city.

Although Ulaanbaatar has many rich inhabitants, still a part of the majority lives without running water. Also heating and cooking gives serious air pollution especially in winter. Sources of the pollution are mainly the simple stoves used for heating and cooking in the city's yurt quarters, but also the local power plants (fuelled on coal).

Unlike the Netherlands many conifers are used as avenue trees in the city of Ulaanbaatar,because of the long winter time. They prefer using conifers instead of broad-leaved species, as Standard (Avenue) tree in their city. A large number of these species are imported from Western Europe, because they are not available in these large sizes in Mongolia.

There is a great demand for trees in new construction projects. Therefore Poplars are also used. The Poplar tree in the city has a bad image due to their seed production. Enormous clouds of cotton like seed blow in the wind and cause a significant nuisance in summer. Restaurants especially complain about this. It should be possible to select and clone a male or an infertile species to solve this problem.

PUM Netherlands Senior Experts received a request for advice, guidance and support on how to design tree plantation nursery operational processes. This includes best designs of greenhouses suitable for local conditions, selecting best species of plants suitable for the Mongolian harsh climate. A location for the tree nursery has been chosen. The relevant permissions have been obtained for 1 hectare of land in the Aides valley, a couple of kilometres from Ulaanbaatar International Airport. The intention is to build a solid base for the tree nursery.

Up until the present day woodlands and trees are only seen as expendable commodities and are being used as such. Numerous and frequent forest fires and inappropriate forest management, have caused what was once a great forest-covered area to become transformed into meadow, steppe and bare stony-like areas. In the few forest reserves we can still observe the power of Forest generation processes.

This is a plan for a 3000 km shelter belt consisting of pines, willows, junipers, thorn bushes and other trees. This belt is to run across the desert along the border with China and is intended to halt the growing desertification affecting Mongolia. To join this program, the organisation will start a tree nursery and sell trees to the Government. Sometimes it goes wrong in guiding this project. In the picture we see calves illegally grazing in fenced areas and so they will damage the saplings.

As part of the market investigation, we visit a State run tree nursery, which was established during the period of Communism. They supply about 60% of their trees to Government programs for re- forestation projects. They try to sell 10% of the trees to the local markets, and 30% they use in the direct vicinity. Compost was not available. They did some experiment with a mixture of cow and chicken dung in combination with some top soil of the forest and clayey soil.

In Ulaanbaatar there are many developers and builders and there is a large construction activity. In order to support/prop buildings during construction and to fence off the sites, these companies often illegally use a lot of small diameter trees left in the remaining woods. The residents of the capital also use a large amount of wood as firewood and fences for their yards. Wood is scarce in Ulaanbaatar and young trees should be replanted on a large scale!

Mongolia - Ulaanbaatar.