Every year across the country, the U.S. Forest Service plants trees on thousands of acres of land. These efforts help to restore valuable ecosystems and helping to combat the effects of climate change.
“Planting trees is a win-win investment,” said Dave Cleaves, Climate Change Advisor for the Forest Service. “Not only do trees store carbon, making them one of our most effective tools for climate change mitigation, they provide many other benefits – from watershed protection, to wildlife habitat, to shading houses and reducing cooling costs.”
In the U.S., reforestation efforts are taking place across the country from Maine to Hawaii. Some examples include areas in California where fires burned hundreds of thousands of acres including the La Brea and Station Fires and the bark beetle-killed forests in the Rocky Mountains.
Because of the difficulty of reforesting large, inaccessible regions, the Forest Service has developed innovative ways to plant in these hard-to-reach areas. One such unique planting technique is to drop thousands of seedlings from airplanes using weighted arrow-like tips that plunge the young trees into the ground on steep, inaccessible slopes.
“Reforesting areas where trees have been killed by fire, drought, or insects is an investment in the future,” said Cleaves.”And focusing on the future is an integral part of the Forest Service mission.