How Does Canada Plant So Many Trees?

Almost every Canadian has heard about the importance of tree planting.  And many Canadians know that a very large number of trees are planted in Canada each year.  Current estimates are that over 700 Million trees are planted each year across the country!  Some of these are planted after logging companies harvest timber for lumber or pulp & paper, and some are planted because it's just good for the environment.

 

Recently, Canada's federal government promised that they would help ensure that an extra TWO BILLION trees would be planted in Canada over the next ten years.  That's an extra 200 million trees per year, on top of the 700 million trees already being planted.  That brings the total to just under a billion trees per year!  Canadians should be proud.

Some of the trees are planted in what is known as "reforestation."  This is when a previously forested area gets planted again, to bring back a forest that is no longer there.  There are various reasons for replanting areas.  Most people immediately recognize that "replanting" occurs after logging.  But the truth is that it's a lot bigger than that.  Wildfires and insects typically kill far more trees than the logging industry, so there's always a lot of work funded by government or NGO's to fix problems after forest fires, and after tree beetle outbreaks.

Some tree planting projects focus on "afforestation."  This is when people plant trees in areas that have not had any trees recently.  If a farm has old pastureland that is not used anymore for livestock or growing food, the farmers will sometimes decide to turn it back into a forest.  And sometimes, grasslands that don't contain habitat for at-risk species will be planted, to build a new forest.

  

Trees are planted all over the country.  The majority are planted in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario, but every single province has its own tree planting programs.

Who plants the trees?  Typically, the spring and summer months are the easiest months to plant trees, because the weather is good and the ground isn't covered with snow.  Because of this, a lot of university students spend their summers planting.  But tree planting also takes place in the fall.  Some tree planting is done by large companies.  Some is done by small companies.  And some is done by NGO's and volunteers.  The variety and diversity of people who plant trees is quite incredible.

There's also a lot of variety in the types of trees that are planted.  Typically, the majority of trees planted are coniferous.  This means that they're "cone bearing" trees.  Most Canadians are familiar with these species:  pine, spruce, fir, cedar, and a few other less common species.  Most of these coniferous trees keep their needles over the winter, so they stay green year-round.

 

 

 Some people also plant "deciduous" trees.  This refers to trees with leaves that drop off the tree each winter.  You're familiar with different types of deciduous trees:  oak, birch, elms, chestnuts, and of course our favorite, the maple tree.

All told, more than forty different species of tree are planted across Canada each year!

In these uncertain times for the environment, I'm glad that Canadians place so much importance on tree planting.

If you'd like to learn more about tree planting in Canada, please visit the educational tree planting site at:

  www.replant.ca

 

Maybe you'll want to go out to your backyard this summer, and plant a tree!

- Jonathan "Scooter" Clark

Professional Tree Planter

 

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

Short-Term Individual Changes To Reduce Energy Consumption

As a society, we have to make a lot of changes to mitigate the effects of energy depletion. However, a lot of people feel helpless when it comes to effecting change, because they feel that their actions won’t make a difference. However, it would be a mistake to think that. Above and beyond the role that societal changes play, people making individual changes in their consumption patterns can actually make a major difference. Just as conservation became a popular buzzword after the oil shocks in the early 1970’s, a large mass of people making changes in personal habits will possibly put off major declines in our standards of living by a few or several years. One should not underestimate the power of grassroots societal shifts.

Several people have emailed to ask me what they can do to try to help solve the problem on an individual level, or what I’m doing personally to help. So before I write a post talking about ways that our collective society should change, I’ve come up with a short list of five simple things that I’ve already done to change my personal habits, which each play a small part in reducing my overall energy footprint. These changes go beyond common-sense items like allowing your house to be cooler in the fall and winter (in northern climates), not standing in front of the fridge with the door open, and pledging not to buy a new car. And just so you know, I don’t have to do any of the things on this list: I just want to. It makes me feel like I’m contributing to the solution (partly) rather than being solely a part of the problem:

01. Compact fluorescent light bulbs: If you haven’t seen compact fluorescent bulbs yet, you will soon. They are becoming immensely popular. Yes, they may cost about four to six times as much as a regular incandescent light bulb, but they usually have a rated life that is five to ten times as long as an incandescent, so the cost equals out. Where you gain, however, lies in the fact that it only takes about one third or less electricity to power these bulbs compared to regular bulbs. Aside from a very small number of applications (ie. if you ‘need’ or prefer yellowish/incandescent light in a particular area, or if the bulb needs to support certain shapes of wire shades of a lamp cover), these bulbs are a sure-fire way to reduce your electrical bill.

02. Wash with cold water: I’m no fashion king, but when it comes to washing my clothing, I’m pretty sure that cold water does almost as good a job as hot water. And it uses far less electricity, because you don’t have to heat the water. Even whites can be washed in cold water – try it yourself.

03. Turn down your water heater: The way that a water heater works is that it keeps a large amount of water on hand at a certain temperature, let say around 150 degrees Fahrenheit. That water may sometimes come directly out your taps as original “hot water,” or it may be mixed slightly with cold water, depending on how you run your taps. If you find that the water coming out of the taps in your home is too hot to run your hands under, so you mix it with cold, or if you need to have a lot of cold mixed in with the hot to make your shower bearable, then your hot water heater is probably set higher than it needs to be. Turning it down by ten degrees or so probably won’t make your life uncomfortable, but over the course of the year, if you only have to keep the water ten degrees cooler than before, you’re saving a lot of electricity again. The only disclaimer I have about this task is that you shouldn’t play with the settings on your hot water heater if you aren’t comfortable working around electricity. Turning the temperature down is quite easy for an experienced handyman, but if you’re not that type of person, ask a friend who is comfortable to turn down the thermostat.

04. Walking to work more often: As a tree planter, I walk about fifteen to thirty kilometres per day, on average. I don`t know why I tend to get so lazy in the winter. Western civilization has made me decadent, but I can change. During the fall and winter, I can certainly take a ten-minute walk to work, rather than driving there. The less that I travel in the car, the better, and since most of my driving is in a very small radius around town, walking is quite often feasible. And for the days when I’m busy and running late, walking will just mean that I have to plan my time better. Besides, spending more time walking to work and from work will be healthy. Well, except maybe for my liver – if I`m walking home from work all the time, I`ll be able to have a couple drinks before I leave.

05. Refrain from using Christmas lighting: A lot of Canadians take great pride in decorating their houses with extensive Christmas lights in December. This will be a hard tradition for many to let go of, but the fact is that it burns a lot of unnecessary energy. If you hold off from putting the lights up this coming Christmas season, you’re effectively saying to your neighbours, “I’m doing my part to help conserve energy.” I`m not saying that you should refrain from having a decorated tree inside just yet (although that may also change in the future), but at least the outside lights can be sacrificed. If you’re not sure about this decision, look at your electric bill before you go digging out the Christmas lights this December.


You may find it interesting that only one of these specific five items, #4, deals with saving fuel or oil directly. The other four items deal with reducing electricity usage. But remember, a high proportion of the electricity generated in North America comes directly from power plants that consume oil or natural gas, so if you can minimize your electrical bill, you’re actually reducing the amount of oil and/or natural gas that you are consuming. And the best thing about all of these items (except for #4) is that it really takes NO effort or willpower to do these. All you have to do is make a decision one time, and you’ll continue to get the benefits again and again after that. Take the plunge – go out right now and make a list of five things that you`re going to do to save energy, and follow it. You can borrow from my list if you want.