Data from: Opportunities for biodiversity gains under the world’s largest reforestation programme

Reforestation is a critical means of addressing the environmental and
social problems of deforestation. China’s Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP)
is the world’s largest reforestation scheme. Here we provide the first
nationwide assessment of the tree composition of GFGP forests and the
first combined ecological and economic study aimed at understanding GFGP’s
biodiversity implications. Across China, GFGP forests are overwhelmingly
monocultures or compositionally simple mixed forests. Focusing on birds
and bees in Sichuan Province, we find that GFGP reforestation results in
modest gains (via mixed forest) and losses (via monocultures) of bird
diversity, along with major losses of bee diversity. Moreover, all current
modes of GFGP reforestation fall short of restoring biodiversity to levels
approximating native forests. However, even within existing modes of
reforestation, GFGP can achieve greater biodiversity gains by promoting
mixed forests over monocultures; doing so is unlikely to entail major
opportunity costs or pose unforeseen economic risks to households.