Analyzing the Liberal Promise to Plant 2 Billion Trees

With the recent federal election results giving the Liberal party a win, many tree planters' minds turned to that party's election promise to ensure that Canada plants 2 billion trees in the next ten years.  Let's try to decide if that's possible, and also try to estimate how many trees are currently planted in Canada each year.

First, let's break it down into an annual number.  Two billion trees over ten years is 200 million trees per year.  Now I don't think that we're going to see 200 million extra trees flooding the market next year.  The planting industry isn't prepared for that, and the forest nurseries across the country might not even have that much spare capacity right now.  The forest nurseries in western Canada are probably operating very close to capacity, and I don't know if the nurseries elsewhere in Canada are in the same situation.  Also, if the federal government is concerned about budgets, they will probably not front-load that spending commitment.  IF they follow through on their promise, they would probably prefer to spend small amounts in the first five or six years, and then reluctantly ramp up their financial commitments near the end of that 10-year period.  That's what politicians like to do.  Of course, if they do their research, they'll learn that a gradual but consistent ramp-up would be the best way to achieve their goals in light of labour and growing constraints from industry.

Due to the absence of details associated with this election promise, it's not inappropriate to ask, "What did they mean by this?"  Are they saying they will plant an average of 200 million per year, or are they saying they will plant an extra 200 million per year on top of what is already being planted?  I can answer that, based upon simple logic.  Two hundred million trees per year sounds like a big number.  It isn't.  Right now, the province of BC is expected to plant slightly over 300 million trees in 2020.  In that context, we've answered our first question:  Trudeau has implied (whether intentionally or not) that these two billion trees are extra trees above what is already happening.  Otherwise, he's promising a number that would be a reduction from current levels.

I've been trying to figure out what the biggest challenges with this promise will be.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three, and I've already mentioned two of them.  Three challenges will be labour supply, growing capacity, and where to put the trees.

Labour Supply shouldn't be a problem.  It's true that a lot of people don't really want to plant trees once they find out what is involved, because the work is quite physically and mentally demanding.  But to plant an extra 200 million trees per year would require perhaps only another four thousand seasonal (summer) tree planters, if those planters average about fifty thousand trees apiece per summer.  Recruiting that many people won't be easy, but if the wages are fair, it's an achievable goal.  And for any planters who think that an average of 50,000 trees per planter per season is low, remember that I'm taking attrition into account (people quitting after a week) and also considering that some of the land may be more difficult than what most planters are currently accustomed to working on.

Growing Capacity at forest nurseries would likely be a problem if the industry ramped up to 200 million in year one.  However, that's not likely to be the case.  The forest nursery industry on Canada's west coast has dealt with growing pains (pardon the pun) for the past two years.  The record-breaking wildfire years in 2017 and 2018 made many nursery owners realize that they needed to build more greenhouse space, because otherwise, the industry wouldn't be able to grow enough trees to meet demand.  And they did expand to meet needs for the 2020 season.  Going forward, with 24 months' notice, the national forest nursery industry will be able to accommodate demand.

Finally, Where are the trees going to be planted?  There's a big difference between reforestation (replanting logged areas) versus afforestation (planting vacant land, such as old pasture land).  A lot of reforestation needs are already being taken care of by the existing patchwork of regulations in various provinces.  In those cases, either provincial governments or private industry (and public mills) are taking care of reforesting the recently logged areas.  The main opportunity then will probably come from planting three specific types of land:  forests burned by wildfire, forests ravaged by insects or diseases, and vacant land or unused farm/pasture land.  To be clear, the first two of these three options are just additional types of reforestation, even though they aim at post-disaster targets instead of post-harvest activities.

I've been told that the estimated budget for these two billion trees is three billion dollars.  If that's the case, then that works out to $1.50 per tree.  Any tree planters who are reading this probably just had their eyes light up!  But settle down, that's not the windfall that it sounds like.  Many tree planting companies are accustomed to receiving perhaps 40 to 75 cents to plant each tree, and they manage to survive.  But remember that the federal budget of perhaps $1.50 per tree will also have to cover land acquisition costs (probably averaging over 60-80 cents per tree, if the government starts buying land), seedling costs, compliance costs, and administration costs.  The government could also pay for planting on private properties (for example, by funding regional woodlot owners' associations), but then there is no guarantee that the trees won't just be cut down in 50-60 years.  If we're going to plant two billion trees to help fight climate change, we can't just cut them down in a few decades.  They need to be protected by law.

There may be some non-planters who are reading this, who think that this is a good time to start a tree planting company.  If that's the case, I would urge extreme caution.  The planting industry is much more complex than it appears on the surface.  If you're reading this post and think that you should start a planting company, and you don't have prior experience as a seasonal post-harvest tree planter in Canada, I would highly, highly recommend that you try tree planting for a few seasons to give yourself a chance to start to understand the industry.  Otherwise, you're going to lose your shirt (speaking in a financial sense).  Having said that, there may be opportunities for many experienced planters to start their own small companies over the next several years.  The greatest opportunities for these individuals will probably be in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.  BC and Alberta are quite saturated with a mature planting industry.

Incidentally, my estimate of how many trees are planted in Canada each year is 666 million.  Check out this blog post to find out how I arrived at that number.

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca

About Replant.ca Environmental

Earlier this year, I "started" a new company.  The goal was to plant trees, on a volunteer basis, to help fight against climate change.  I had already been planting a small number of volunteer trees each year for the past several years, but I wanted to make it more official.  I also believed that I could plant trees for environmental reasons on a much larger scale if I formalized the company.  After all, I had been receiving dozens of inquiries about this type of work every year.  Also, I've been working as a professional tree planter for a couple decades, so I figured that my extensive field experience would be invaluable in building out a large planting organization.

I decided to call the company Replant.ca Environmental.

 

Now I knew that using this name had the potential to be confusing.  After all, the original Replant.ca website has been the most well-known tree planting site in Canada since I started it in 1998.  It hosts thousands of photos, music, videos, training materials, a message board, and much more.  During its tenure, the website has been visited a few million times, and it has been the reason, directly or indirectly, that tens of thousands of university/college students have found summer jobs as tree planters across the country.  But the name also has incredibly strong brand recognition, and I felt that was going to be helpful in establishing the new company.

The only drawback to my main industry experience is that my regular job as a professional tree planter is just that ... a job.  The tree planting that I normally perform is intended to fill empty cut-blocks after logging companies cut down part of a forest.  To be clear, I don't work for the logging companies directly.  I work (on a seasonal basis) for a few different companies that specialize in tree planting, and those companies are hired by the logging companies or by the government.  I refer to this work as commercial or industrial "post-harvest" reforestation, because we rebuild forests after commercial harvesting.  This is the kind of work that is done seasonally by tens of thousands of Canadians.  It's the work that Replant.ca focuses upon.  To learn more, go to this link:

www.replant.ca

When I started Replant.ca Environmental, my goal was to become more involved with a different and "better" type of reforestation.  I wanted to plant trees that wouldn't be cut down in the future by logging companies.  Replant.ca Environmental meets that goal.  Our long-term plan is to acquire land, plant trees, and build community forests that the public is allowed to visit and enjoy.  In fact, the public is welcome to visit any of our properties right now!  We're still early in the process of building our first community forests, next month (November 2019), we'll start creating complex trail systems on our first property, to enhance recreational enjoyment for the public.  These trails will be open to recreational users for year-round hiking (and cross-country skiiing during the winter).  Our goal is to have three community forest properties completely developed within three years, with each individual property being over 100 acres in size.

Thankfully, I've had some help from a few of my professional tree planting friends, including Laura, Karla, and Jon.  Although they also work for part of each year in post-harvest reforestation, they too share my goal of building permanent forests that won't be cut down in the future.

To really learn more about our company, you should visit our new website.  We launched it officially at the start of September, but we're adding new content every week as we finish building it out.  Here's the link:

replant.ca/environmental

Here are three quick facts:

1.  The Replant.ca Environmental company does NOT work for or with logging companies.

2.  We aim for biodiversity.  We do not plant monocultures.  We planted five different species in 2019, and are aiming for twelve species in 2020.

3.  Our three-year goal includes planting over 100,000 trees in 2020, and developing three complete Community Forest properties in Atlantic Canada by the fall of 2022.


If you want to support us, share the link to our website! Thanks for reading...

  - Jonathan Clark

Sharon Moalem's "Survival Of The Sickest"

I read a lot of books, but I'm not frequently motivated to write a review of these books.  However, I just finished a book that one of my tree planters recommended to me, and I found it to be a great choice.

The book was written by Sharon Moalem, a Canadian doctor with a Ph.D. in human physiology, specializing in neurogenetics and evolutionary medicine.  The book is non-fiction, and is best suited for readers who have at least completed high school biology, or who have a basic understanding of genetics and/or medicine.  But this is far from a textbook.

Rather than going into a traditional style of review, I'm instead going to just list a handful of subjects that the book talks about, in point form.  This alone should be enough to let you know whether or not you might find it to be interesting:

- Many people are familiar with the practice of "bleeding" a patient, which is a practice that happened with the earliest recorded history, and which for some time in the modern era "made no sense."  Well, consider the fact that iron is a critical mineral for human life (I didn't realize how critical until I read this book).  What if there was a disease (there is, called hemochromatosis) in which a person was unable to "use up" the iron in their body, and the amount stored kept growing?  Too much of a good thing is sometimes bad, and this oversupply of iron can happen.  With a lack of other easy ways to remove iron from the blood, "bleeding" a patient sometimes IS a good practice.

- People with hemochromatosis have too much iron in their bodies, as noted above.  But even though their bodies are littered with iron, one important place where this iron doesn't collect is in the white blood cells.  The bubonic plague of the Middle Ages was a bacterial disease in which the infectious agent entered the white blood cells, and the iron in the white cells was an important part of the growth of the infection.  But people with hemochromatosis lucked out.  In many cases, the lack of iron in their microphages protected the human from the disease.

- There's a great section talking about Diabetes and sugar intake (I'll have a lot less sugar in my coffee from now on).  The number of obese children in north America today is staggering, and getting worse.  Many of these children are getting diabetes, as a tie-in to their obesity.  I won't get into the diabetes section in depth, but it taught me a lot about how to should think about certain lifestyle changes.

- The pituitary gland is indirectly responsible for the production of melatonin, which helps prevent skin cancer.  But the pituitary gland gets its information from the optic nerve.  Wearing sunglasses will trick the optic nerve, and affect your melatonin production, which can put you at much higher risk for skin cancer!

- There is a theory that the reason people often sneeze upon exposure to bright sunlight is because when we still lived in caves, if a person sneezed upon coming out of the cave into bright sunlight, the sneeze might dislodge microbes and molds from the nose or upper respiratory tract.  I hadn't heard this theory before.  I actually disagree with it, but it's interesting (my theory is much more basic, namely that a sneeze is intended to possibly help divert your stare when you look at the sun, to avoid damage to your retinas).

- The last ice age ended not over a slow change of a few thousand years, but rather, over an unbelievably rapid global adjustment of just three years!  This has staggering implications upon climate change theory today.  We could mess up our planet far, far more quickly than we currently believe.

- Human females tend to be more likely to conceive males during "good times" and more likely to conceive females during "tough times" (this refers to a very macro scale, as in global conflicts and disasters, not a temporary challenge such as "I broke a coffee mug half an hour before we had sex).

The book also goes into discussions such as:

- Why Asians often have such an intolerance to alcohol.

- Theories on better ways to prevent cholera outbreaks.

- How sunspot activity (and solar radiation) may relate to some past global influenza epidemics and pandemics.

- The relationship of telomerase to the Hayflick Limit to cancer to longevity.

- Why some diseases are passed down directly from woman to granddaughter, rather than woman to daughter (because when a female is conceived, her lifetime supply of eggs is already in her body when she's still a fetus - thus the eggs that produce the next generation were actually carried inside the grandmother's body when the mom was not yet born).



Phew, this post has covered a lot of ground.  Well, if all of the above is of interest to you, then you're going to learn a lot from this book.

Happy reading ...

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