Churches Across Faith Traditions Plant 12,000 Trees

In keeping with the biblical mandate to care for God's creation, thousands of people from ten faith traditions have come together to plant 12,000 trees in northern Michigan.

About 100 congregations from Presbyterian, Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, United Methodist Church, Jewish, and Quaker traditions, among others, and nonprofit organizations are participating in a tree project led by the interfaith coalition Upper Peninsula Earth Keepers.

Volunteers planted the first of 12,000 12- to 16-inch White Spruce and Red Pine trees during the blessing of the trees ceremony on Wednesday in observance of Earth Day.

"This is about more than putting trees in the ground – it’s an expression by the faith communities of love and care for God’s creation," said Kyra Fillmore, Catholic Earth Keeper team member and the project’s communications coordinator for faith communities, according to the Presbyterian News Service.

Thousands of volunteers will be picking up tree seedlings on May 2 and planting the equivalent of a forest across 400 miles the following day.

"Our interfaith tree-planting effort is more than another conservation project," said the Rev. Jon Magnuson, co-founder of the Earth Keeper initiative and executive director of the Cedar Tree Institute, as reported by the Presbyterian News Service. "With prayers, hymns and the blessing of 12,000 seedlings, it's a gentle proclamation of a new consciousness and commitment among our faith communities to care for God's creation."

Being stewards of God's creation has taken on greater significance as more Christians view global warming as a serious problem.

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The Painting is by Henry Hillier Parker

Volunteers prepare trees and shrubs for Arbor Day sale

Soil and Water Conservation District workers observed Earth Day on Wednesday by preparing more than 1,000 tree and shrub orders for distribution.

Seedlings and transplants will be distributed from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Saratoga County Fairgrounds.

More than 1,000 people have pre-ordered bare root plants. There will also be a variety of evergreen and deciduous bare root trees, shrubs and ground covers available for purchase at low cost on a first come, first served basis.

The species available are well suited for conservation purposes, and provide food and cover for songbirds and other wildlife.

This week is National Volunteer Week and the district relies heavily on such people to accomplish its missions and goals. All board members are volunteers — Ray Bowman, Don Monica, Tom Wood, Richard Hunter, Victoria Garlanda, Jay Matthews and Phil Griffen. These and other people helped prepare the tree and shrub orders for this weekend’s distribution.

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The Painting is by Henry Hillier Parker

For Md. Grad Student, a Time to Plant

David Ruppert's approach to preserving family trees is a bit unconventional. He plants them by the hundreds.

The Kensington native's quest to preserve and propagate the seed of local vegetation began years ago on his family's Olney property, when a magnificent white oak began to fail and produced in its death throes an abundance of acorns -- a large yield known as a mast.

"Sometimes, when they know it's the end, they'll produce a last huge one," Ruppert said of the phenomenon. "It was a truly gigantic white oak, probably one of the biggest white oaks in the county."

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The Painting is by Henry Hillier Parker

Tree planting caps governor's busy Earth Day

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger marked Earth Day on Wednesday in part by helping one local company reach its goal of planting 1 million trees.

Schwarzenegger, in one of three Earth Day appearances statewide, helped plant the 1 millionth tree at Shaklee. He was joined by company officials and Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Maathai is the "global ambassador" for the company's "A Million Trees, A Million Dreams" campaign. Her group, based in Kenya, started in 1977 with tree plantings and is a way to empower women by getting them involved with the environment.

Shaklee makes items such as vitamins, household cleaners and personal hygiene products. The company said that in 2000 it was the first company in the world to be certified as being "climate neutral" by the Climate Neutral Network, with the tree plantings being counted toward that effort.

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The Painting is by Henry Hillier Parker

Supervisors protect historic tree in Knightsen

When George Knight settled in far East County more than 100 years ago, he planted a eucalyptus tree to mark his land.

On Tuesday, Contra Costa supervisors made it possible for the tree to stand tall for years to come in the town named for Knight.

The tree, located on Delta Road near Bartels Drive, was designated a Heritage Tree by supervisors, protecting it from being cut down and preserving a piece of Knightsen's history.

Some say the tree, with a trunk 22 feet round and an estimated height of 50 feet, can be seen from Byron.

The decision was made despite the tree straddling county and privately owned land.

The owner, Huguette Bartels, wrote a letter opposing the designation, but in the end, the community's voice was louder.

"This is something that the community supports," Supervisor Mary Piepho said, "and because of that, this is something the board supports."

Bartels is still responsible for maintaining the tree but does not have any additional obligations, said conservation and development director Catherine Kutsuris. A permit is needed for Bartels to do anything significant to the tree.

In her letter, Bartels wrote that she opposed the designation because it was a "dangerous and very messy tree" that was "not native of California." She also said the cost of upkeep was too much for her to handle.

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The Painting is by Ivan Shishkin

Enterprise Rent-A-Car continues tree-planting

For the fourth consecutive year, Enterprise Rent-A-Car will help plant one million trees this year to replace those lost to disease, fire and other natural disasters in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The new trees also will help protect watersheds, lessen the risk of infestation by invasive plants and restore wildlife habitat in the forest, the car rental giant said Monday.

The project is part of the 50 Million Tree Pledge, a partnership of Enterprise, the Arbor Day Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service.

Enterprise is paying $50 million over the next 50 years to plant 50 million trees in honor of the company’s 50th birthday in 2007. That’s the equivalent of planting all the trees in New York’s Central Park every 10 days.

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The Painting is by Ivan Shishkin

Tree care: A do-nothing approach often is best

Scientists study the reaction trees have to maintenance efforts such as pruning and chemical treatments over the course of time and, in many cases, we have learned to leave well enough alone. A good example of this is the use of pruning paints and sealers. Painting a pruning cut with a black, sometimes tar-based paint was standard 20 years ago. The original intent was to prevent decay from occurring at the pruning site. However, the reality is painting won't prevent decay and can have the opposite effect.

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The Painting is by Ivan Shishkin

Efforts aimed at boosting tree cover

As Earth Day and Arbor Day arrive today and Friday, local planning officials are preparing to offer county residents incentives to help restore the area's declining tree cover.

A new program, called Leaves for Neighborhoods, will make $25 coupons available to purchase a shade tree valued at $75 or more from a participating nursery.

Planners say the county has been losing tree cover to infill and denser development for decades, as trees were cut to make room for houses. Also, development has interfered with the root systems of trees and likely caused many to die early, they say.

Meanwhile, the County Council and the Department of Environmental Protection are working toward a tree preservation ordinance and looking at zoning changes that could stem or reverse the pattern of tree losses in residential areas.

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The Painting is by Ivan Shishkin

From President Obama to NASA, Americans Are Planting Earth Day Trees

To mark Earth Day, the top politicians in the US this afternoon rolled up their sleeves and took up their shovels to plant trees at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens along the Washington, DC border with Maryland.

President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden planted trees with the Student Conservation Association in a muddy marsh beside the Anacostia River at Kenilworth.

The dignitaries walked up to the planting site with arms around the student workers, who were all wearing T-shirts that said "SCA – Earth Day 09."

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The Painting is by Ivan Shishkin

Tree planting in the driest place on Earth

The southern coast of Peru is one of the driest places on Earth. Why would anyone choose this parched location to re-plant a forest?

The strip of desert between the Andean mountains and the Pacific Ocean has an annual average rainfall as low as 1.5mm.

By way of comparison, London enjoys around 650mm a year.

It's not an obvious place to choose if you're looking for somewhere to plant trees, but for restoration ecologist Oliver Whaley the harsh environment of the northern fringes of the Atacama desert is part of the point.

By helping to restore the shrinking native forests, the aim is to benefit local people and wildlife, prevent soil erosion, and help alleviate climate change.

"If we can get trees established here, and learn how to do it with as little water as possible, then it is a model for the rest of the world," he says.

While the plight of the world's rainforests are well known, the same cannot be said of tropical dry forests. These less biodiverse, but equally remarkable forests, face threats every bit as severe as their better known cousins.

The Atacama dry forest "is really an ecosystem on its last legs," says Mr Whaley, of London's Kew Gardens - an internationally renowned botanical research institution.

The tree under threat is the huarango, Prosopis limensis, found only in the Ica region of Peru.

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The Painting is by George Caleb Bingham

Amazon Destruction: Why is the rainforest being destroyed in Brazil?

Between May 2000 and August 2005, Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometers of forest(an area larger than Greece)and since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. Why is Brazil losing so much forest? What can be done to slow deforestation?

Why is the Brazilian Amazon being Destroyed?

In many tropical countries, the majority of deforestation results from the actions of poor subsistence cultivators. However, in Brazil only about one-third of recent deforestation can be linked to "shifted" cultivators. A large portion of deforestation in Brazil can be attributed to land clearing for pastureland by commercial and speculative interests, misguided government policies, inappropriate World Bank projects, and commercial exploitation of forest resources. For effective action it is imperative that these issues be addressed. Focusing solely on the promotion of sustainable use by local people would neglect the most important forces behind deforestation in Brazil.

Brazilian deforestation is strongly correlated to the economic health of the country: the decline in deforestation from 1988-1991 nicely matched the economic slowdown during the same period, while the rocketing rate of deforestation from 1993-1998 paralleled Brazil's period of rapid economic growth. During lean times, ranchers and developers do not have the cash to rapidly expand their pasturelands and operations, while the government lacks funds to sponsor highways and colonization programs and grant tax breaks and subsidies to forest exploiters.

A relatively small percentage of large landowners clear vast sections of the Amazon for cattle pastureland. Large tracts of forest are cleared and sometimes planted with African savanna grasses for cattle feeding. In many cases, especially during periods of high inflation, land is simply cleared for investment purposes. When pastureland prices exceed forest land prices (a condition made possible by tax incentives that favor pastureland over natural forest), forest clearing is a good hedge against inflation.

Such favorable taxation policies, combined with government subsidized agriculture and colonization programs, encourage the destruction of the Amazon. The practice of low taxes on income derived from agriculture and tax rates that favor pasture over forest overvalues agriculture and pastureland and makes it profitable to convert natural forest for these purposes when it normally would not be so.

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The Painting is by Henri Rousseau

Mysterious Bee Disappearance Could Disrupt U.S. Agriculture

Up to a quarter of the nation's commercially raised honeybees have disappeared, befuddling scientists and stirring fears that the country's crops could go unpollinated.

Contrary to the homespun image of rural beekeepers and cottage idylls, honeybees in the U.S. are raised on an industrial scale and used to pollinate crops in areas where monoculture planting and pesticide use have killed off indigenous pollinators

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The Painting is by Henri Rousseau