2 thoughts on “PBS: When, and Why, Tree Planting Fails”
You get a lot of bang for your buck with “urban forestry” planting projects. It’s easier to care for trees that aren’t planted a hundred miles away, and a single tree can provide a disproportionate benefit in an urban setting in terms of shade and critters and →increased property values* and tax base← for the city.
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*The paradoxical downside of improving a poor neighborhood is that making it more attractive will tend to raise the housing values and drive the poor out.
Had a Agronomist (?) chum from Peru. He would go ballistic about deforestation of the Amazon, screaming that it would become a desert. That was in 1972. I expect he will be proved effectively correct.
Here in OZ there is an outfit called Trees For Life. Volunteers receive dirt, growing tubes and native seeds They grow them into seedlings and plant them out in planned locations. They pay for this privilege, and spend many man days (OK , person days) back breaking labor planting them. Understand the system is successful up to a point. There are situations where recipients of the seedlings are lax on follow up care. PBS complaining about success rates is ingenious and unhelpful. Reasons for preserving the Amazon are legion, specific to this site, a huge carbon store. Tropical rain forests are carbon neutral, not a sink, also ingenious, just saying.
You get a lot of bang for your buck with “urban forestry” planting projects. It’s easier to care for trees that aren’t planted a hundred miles away, and a single tree can provide a disproportionate benefit in an urban setting in terms of shade and critters and →increased property values* and tax base← for the city.
_______
*The paradoxical downside of improving a poor neighborhood is that making it more attractive will tend to raise the housing values and drive the poor out.
Had a Agronomist (?) chum from Peru. He would go ballistic about deforestation of the Amazon, screaming that it would become a desert. That was in 1972. I expect he will be proved effectively correct.
Here in OZ there is an outfit called Trees For Life. Volunteers receive dirt, growing tubes and native seeds They grow them into seedlings and plant them out in planned locations. They pay for this privilege, and spend many man days (OK , person days) back breaking labor planting them. Understand the system is successful up to a point. There are situations where recipients of the seedlings are lax on follow up care. PBS complaining about success rates is ingenious and unhelpful. Reasons for preserving the Amazon are legion, specific to this site, a huge carbon store. Tropical rain forests are carbon neutral, not a sink, also ingenious, just saying.