Did You Know
The NFF is on the verge of planting 6 million trees on our National Forests. That’s basically a tree for every resident of Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Washington DC.
With the help of forward-thinking American businesses, we make an outstanding difference for our National Forests. Tree-planting helps our forests by
- enhancing wildlife habitat,
- sequestering the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide,
- improving watersheds, and
- enhancing recreational experiences for the millions that visit our National Forests annually.
We Find the Need
With tremendous reforestation need across the National Forest System, the U.S. Forest Service is always busy identifying new areas for reforestation. Forestry experts look at past and current forest conditions and decide how to best reforest the area.
Years ahead of planting trees, the Forest Service gathers seeds from native trees in the area. These seeds are sent to a Forest Service nursery, where they are grown for one to three years. When the project and seedlings are ready, they will be transferred back to the National Forest from where they came.
We Select Awesome Places
The NFF works closely with the Forest Service to find projects that are in high-priority areas and deliver the most conservation benefit. Depending on the interests and donation levels of our corporate partners, the NFF may be able to provide customized project opportunities.
More often than not, there is enough of a tree-planting need across the National Forest System to find a project that benefits both our corporate partner’s goals as well as the NFF’s goal of restoring our National Forests. Once a project is chosen, the donation is collected and the NFF commits to the project with the Forest Service.
We Get to Work!
Once the Forest Service receives the funds, they begin the project. Funding for the project extends beyond the cost of seedlings, and may include hiring a professional tree-planting contractor crew to plant trees or installing seedling protectors for the young trees. Our focus is to restore as many acres of our National Forests as possible, not to pad our bottom line. We put 85 cents of every dollar donated straight “into the ground”, maximizing results for our forests and our partners.
And, one more thing: we make sure it’s a success…
After seedlings are planted, the Forest Service and the NFF check back on the project area to measure the survival rates of seedlings. Unexpected weather events, herbivore browsing and insects and disease can all challenge the survival of newly planted trees. If survival rates fall lower than expected, the Forest Service may decide to re-plant the area.
With millions of acres of our National Forests that could benefit from reforestation, we invite mindful corporations to help the NFF plant more trees.
Contact Wes Swaffar for more information about the Trees for US program !
