#foresty
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Don’t let anyone tell you there’s nothing our governments can do to combat climate change. They can. They simply choose not to, because they don’t consider anything worth doing unless it’s immediately profitable. Profit takes precedence over progress. This has not only caused virtually every environmental problem we’re facing, but it’s also why our entire society is stagnating under a culture of consumerism and disposable commodities.
This is referring to the CCC (civilian conservation corps), basically a tree planting army under FDR. Overall they planted about 3 billion trees all over the country, it was so successful that most Americans really don’t know that a solid chunk of their forests are only about 100-85 year old new growths. Volunteer conservationist groups nowadays could potentially recreate this at a notably smaller scale if the government were to provide a store of local seeds and land to remediate.
This is CURRENTLY going on in Maryland, and there is a new program called ‘5 Million Trees’ going to be starting soon. There has been a push to plant stream-side trees for well over a decade - maybe two? - and my husband has been supervising large-scale tree plantings every single spring for all that time. We planted a stream buffer on our own property in 2004 and those trees are getting amazingly big!
https://dnr.maryland.gov/forests/
All those beige tubes are tree shelters (I know they’re kind of hard to see against the dead grasses). This is from a planting that took place spring of 2020. All those trees are peeking out of the tops of the tubes, now, and doing rather well. We had planned 6 acres of planting, but Covid shut down the planter’s ability to move north into PA and NY. That meant my husband had to find places to place tens of thousands of trees. We planted additional acreage, and he was on the phone for days finding homes for all the seedlings.
The land used for these planting has included privately owned, colleges, some park land, and some townships. All the plantings use a variety of species chosen to be suitable to the site. It’s good stuff, and for the most part nobody outside the DNR and local landowners even knows it’s happening. What’s happening in the other states? Probably more good stuff - anybody want to add to this?
