At the time of the settlement of Iceland around 900 AD, approximately 25-30% of the island was forested and 30-35% covered with other plants. Today 75% of the country is completely deserted. Only about 1% of our land is still forested. Since the settlement, 3.8 million hectares of wooded land have been lost, an average of 3,400 hectares a year or 9 hectares a day. This development must be stopped. We must protect our land from erosion.
The Icelandic population has become aware of this necessity in recent years and attempts are being made to counteract further landscape destruction and to green up eroded areas. Afforestation is the best way to do this. In addition, forests make our environment more habitable and reduce the greenhouse effect by binding carbon.
Currently 6 million trees are planted annually, covering an area of 2,400 hectares. Although the current forest stock is growing at a rate of 2% per year, this is not even as much as the annual rate of erosion. Public opinion has never been so positive about reforestation as it is today. Most Icelanders agree that the wounds of the past depletion must be closed and everyone knows that this is possible.
In the areas suitable for reforestation, we can reclaim 1.2 million hectares of forest. The cuttings we plant now can grow to the height of a man within a decade, and by the middle of the next century they can have become a real forest of 4-5 meter high trees. Such a forest will stop the destruction of soil by erosion and in its protection a gradual recovery of the already lost soil will take place. ("Skógrækt með Skeljungi" 1992)
Although the ACUPARIA was only established at the end of 2016, the series of reforestation efforts by the founder of the foundation goes back to 1991, when the "Fellsmörk" project was created. Together with his family, he then started to reforest land from abandoned remaining farms owned by the state, in cooperation with the Reykjavik Reforestation Association and 42 other conservationists. They named the reforestation area Fellsmörk, after the Fell mountain near Vík in Myrdalur in southern Iceland. And the suffix - "mörk" means "forest" in Icelandic. Many of the first reforestation pioneers gave up in the course of the years, because the conditions under the Eyjafjalla glacier were very difficult. But the success is enormous, despite severe setbacks, and shows that reforestation can be carried out anywhere in Iceland, if it even works here in Fellsmörk.