It is tree planting season and Campbell River is invited to join in.
On Sunday, Oct. 28, from 1 until 4 p.m., Greenways Land Trust and TD Canada Trust will come together on Baikie Island in the Campbell River Estuary to plant 400 native trees and shrubs as part of the ninth annual TD Tree Days.
This is the fourth year in which the organizations are greening our community with their joint planting forces. To date, TD Tree Days volunteers have helped to restore our local estuary with more than 1,000 plants. This annual community event is a chance for nature enthusiasts of all ages to gather, learn, pull on gloves, dig holes and “green where we live” while having fun and enjoying snacks and refreshments.
To register, volunteers can visit the TD Tree Days website (www.tdtreedays.com), email firstname.lastname@example.org or indicate their participation on the Greenways Land Trust Facebook event page.
Plants are superheroes. Their benefits for our survival, safety and comfort are countless. WCAFI, the World Clean Air Forest Initiative, points out some of them:
• “One large tree can provide enough oxygen for four people for a whole day.
• Photosynthesis results in more than oxygen release. The process enables plants to absorb CO2, it separates the carbon from the oxygen and stores carbon in roots and wood.
• Young trees absorb more carbon than old ones. Planting new trees is a great way to help reduce the carbon in the atmosphere.
• It takes about 500 full-sized trees to absorb the CO2 produced by a regular car driven 20,000 km/year.
• A 70-year old tree would return over three tons of carbon to the atmosphere. To put this in perspective – a car only weighs two tons.
• Approximately every three seconds we lose a whole hectare of forest. A hectare is bigger than a football field.”
Acting local is where the global impact starts. In the past three years Greenways Land Trust volunteers have planted over 3,000 native trees and shrubs in order to restore Campbell River’s most important environmentally sensitive areas. Just recently the Forestry Class from Carihi Secondary and the Greenways Conservation Team partnered up and planted around 400 plants along Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek.
“Our on-going local restoration work wouldn’t be possible without the hands-on enthusiasm of our volunteers,” says Cynthia Bendickson, Greenways’ Executive Director. “It needs a community to green a community. That includes volunteer engagement as well as the much needed support from our local politicians for projects such as the Urban Forest Management Plan. Greenways just reached out to the municipal candidates with four environmental questions and published the candidate’s answers on the Greenways website [https://www.greenwaystrust.ca/greenways-in-the-news/].”
The charity will be part of this year’s Festival of Trees at the Campbell River Museum. The spotlight will be shining on a real tree in front of the museum’s entrance which is going to be decorated with multiple notes pointing out some of the countless benefits of trees for our planet. Greenways is grateful for being part of TD Tree Days’ mission.
Volunteers are asked to gather at the Baikie Island parking lot at the end of Robinson Road, North Campbell River (cross the bridge). Follow the TD and Greenways signs.
About TD Tree Days
For nine years, TD Tree Days has helped build healthy and vibrant communities by facilitating the planting of over 300,000 native trees and shrubs across the country. This year, TD launched The Ready Commitment – a multi-year initiative to open doors for a more inclusive and sustainable tomorrow. TD Tree Days is joining this commitment by growing and enhancing green spaces and helping to bring more people together through the outdoors. This year, more than 8,000 volunteers and hundreds of community organizations across North America will come together and contribute to The Ready Commitment target of planting 1 million trees by 2030. (https://www.tdtreedays.com/en-ca/blogs/935)