The most obvious and most common answer is that trees help
the environment. Just like recycling and composting, “plant a tree” is
on the list of things we can do to save the Earth.
It’s a task embraced by even our youngest residents. Every parent of
a son or daughter in Scouts knows that spring means Scoutrees,
when approximately 1,000 adults and children (some as young as
five years old) from Scouts Canada and other youth groups in our
area take part in planting trees.
“There has to be some understanding of we’re all part of the
same environment and so you need to take care of it,” says Mike
Cholubko, the Windsor Area Commissioner for Scouts Canada. “You
get a little dirty and you have a little fun but at the end of the day,
you can say ‘I planted some trees’ and that’s something that not
every five-year-old can say. So it’s important that we do those kinds
of things for the community that we live in and to be good citizens.”
The Windsor Scouts plant trees wherever the City of Windsor
asks them to, and for the last couple of years, have been primarily
planting trees in East Riverside Park. Each year, the Scouts plant
3,000 trees within a four-day period. At press time, this year’s
location is unconfirmed.
According to the Essex Region Conservation Authority’s
outreach coordinator Caroline Biribauer, Essex County has the
second lowest natural areas coverage in Ontario. That means of all
the regions in Ontario, Essex County has the second least amount of
forests, wetlands and prairies. So planting trees has become
especially important for environment-concerned groups.
But since ERCA and many others like ScoutsCanada have been
planting trees, the percentage of natural areas coverage has
increased by approximately three per cent since 2002.
“Why we like to plant trees primarily is because they are carbon
sinks. So they take in carbon dioxide which offsets some of the
greenhouse concentrations in our atmosphere,” says Biribauer.
“They also reduce soil erosion, if they’re properly placed, they can
work really well for shade, they can provide a visual screen, a noise
barrier or even like a living snow fence.”
Like the Scoutrees initiative, ERCA also plants trees in the spring
through a spring tree-planting program. During this time, ERCA
uses machine planting to plant seeds mainly on private properties
where the landowners enter into stewardship agreements with
ERCA. They also hire, on average, six people per year to plant trees
by hand in Windsor on school properties, during community tree
planting events like Earth Day and when partnering with the City of
Windsor.
Biribauer says ERCA plants around 120,000-140,000 trees each
spring.
Despite the fact that Windsor is not a rural area, the idea of an
“urban forest” has become something desired by the City of
Windsor. In a place where cars continuously produce pollution in
sync with the many buildings and the factories across the river, a
seed contains something more powerful than meets the eye.
Of all the regions
in Ontario, Essex
County has the
second least
amount of forests,
wetlands and
prairies. So
planting trees has
become especially
important for
environmentconcerned
groups.
April 2015 - The HUB 11